outside my office window, workers with blades elucidate flagging
branches, the beautiful beetles lurking within. First sounds that slip: taste,
freeze past, thirst kiss—such a nice house of almost,
the white mice of my ears curling
in the corner of the maze. Dysregulated for days.
Desire—a frayed knot, a plane
roars over the ash canopy; my head a pair
of baby birds, squeaking wet, unable to flee. The poet
says language is always God, or maybe it was
all we’ve got. Trees are silenced. Ravens.
The day after my hearing test, I find something pink
on the riverbank, brush off the mud. A tiny ear.
–
Angeline Schellenberg has three poetry collections: Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick, 2016), Fields of Light and Stone (UAP, 2020), Mondegreen Riffs (At Bay, 2024). A contemplative spiritual director, second shooter (Anthony Mark Photography), and avid mudlarker, she lives in Winnipeg, Canada, where she hosts the Speaking Crow poetry open mic.