BLUEBERRIES

At the portages, few stopped to pick blueberries
clustered tightly by fistfuls in easy reach, the blue
tears in grey pre-rain light; my son and daughter

sang with the yellow finches feasting on wild delight.
We kneeled among bushes aside the trail, worrying
little beads into our open palms and plastic bags.

Small price we paid: a risk of rain, for prayers.

           

LOONS

I have heard the chorus of loons trilling across wild Quebec nights,
Winding into the furls of wind like sleek ribbons of moonlight,
Banking against the neck of the mountains, casting their songs

Into my sleep. The tongues of autumn lace into dawn, golden
Stalks of sun fray the dusk, thread and sew their eerie voice
Into the quilt of day. If I were a lake, I would lie in wait.

ALYSSA A. LAPPEN'S first chapbook, The People Bear Witness, won the annual award from Ruah: a Journal of Spiritual Poetry and was published in July. Her poems have appeared in The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Blueline, Touched by Adoption: Stories, Letters and Poems (Green River Press), Earth Beneath, Sky Beyond (Outrider Press), Kota Press (www.kotapress.com), New Works Review (www.new-works.org), Out of Line, Kudzu: A Digital Quarterly (www.etext.org/Zines/Kudzu), Switched-on Gutenberg (http://faculty.washington.edu/jnh) Poetry & Story magazine (www.poetrystory.com), Poetry Motel, Neovictorian Cochlea and Heart Quarterly.

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