By E.R. Lutken
Lamium amplexicaule
disturbed ground it grows there only noticed where it isn’t pocked fields’ first clothes darker than grass visited by long-tongued bees dots of purple-red blossoms like drooping trumpets suck away lingering whispers once brash mortar roars gnashing groans now more than silent drowned in leafy baffles Henbit – awkward ally of the hopeless blood’s antimatter square-stemmed rover fused couplet tufts of lobed leaves burble over earth’s fresh wounds wild tangles dismantle the wake of carefully ordered massacres opening beyond green a void of dreamless sleep
Grieved by the Wind
Stagnant southern bayous – somber, rust-bearded cypress trees tower over crowds of spindly knees, sleepless egret and alligator statues, idle turtles stacked on snags suspended above umber mirrors. Half a nation’s dreams, bones of soldiers, bereft throngs lost in milky fog. A counterfeit stillness, ambrotype denial of time, masks the seethe of nature. Thin- legged striders scatter over water’s skin, shiners flash in shallows, mosquito wings wail, as if the Jurassic enclave anticipates its fate: the roar of winds, upheaval of eons in a day.
E. R. Lutken, a retired family physician, worked on the Navajo Nation for many years, then taught science and math in rural Colorado for a few more. Her poems have appeared in Cagibi, Mezzo Cammin, Think, Prime Number and other journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection, “Manifold: poetry of mathematics” (3: A Taos Press, 2021) won the New Mexico First Book Award for 2022. Recently she edited her father’s memoir A Thousand Places Left Behind (University Press of Mississippi, 2023). https://www.erlutkenpoetry.com