HIATUS

 Natalie Homer

The ash pile from the Holy Burn,

salt-and-pepper, crowns the gravel

of the church parking lot. The Christmas trees,

Bibles, and palm leaves from Easter

have begun a second life as smoke and ash.

I think of January in terms of blue:

icy aquamarine, cerulean, the blue that

swirls over china plates, the tired, washed-out

blue of the winter sky.

In this season of afterlight, the trash on the roadside

is glaring, as are the corpses I drove past to get here,

deer, foxes, and opossums.

The orange berries on the barren shrubs

have no business being there.

Hope is a labor like any other.

Natalie Homer's recent poetry has been published in Puerto del Sol, American Literary Review, Four Way Review, Ruminate, Sou’wester, and others. She received an MFA from West Virginia University and lives in southwestern Pennsylvania. Her first collection, Under the Broom Tree, is forthcoming from Autumn House Press.