Poetry by Lynnell Edwards

Lynnell Edwards is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently The Bearable Slant of Light (Red Hen Press, 2024). She serves as Associate Programs Director for the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing where she lectures and mentors in poetry, and serves as Book Reviews Editor for the School's literary magazine Good River Review. More about her work and writing at: http://lynnelledwards.com.

Native Grasses

Happenstance and following the animal path

I find the antler - shed, in the parlance of the field -

its fine tip angling to the sky. I step to lift it

from its nest of rotted leaves and brittle weeds,

the beast that lost it long gone - rubbed it loose

against a low limb -- has moved on. Smooth,

matte-white, hard as the root bone it is,

a single point: one year’s growth. I slip

it in my jacket, steal back to the trail. Later

I make accounting of the day: quail’s nest,

seed pod, spent cocoon, a complete, unfractured skull

I hang in the bare branches of a hackberry tree, totem

of dominion. The spine I let lie in damp, native grasses.

 I Could Just Stay in Bed

I wake to rain and the scent

of damp earth through open

windows, to the sudden strobe

of lightning, the attendant thunder;

to the warm and present heft

of husband beside me. I watch

with slow-opening eyes the sky

brighten with the business of day:

a distant siren fading; an airplane

climbing into the clouds; the early birds

out there getting, chirruping

their messages of location and alarm.

I think of what got left out last night

on the deck, now heavy with wet, and how

best to save it; of the leaf-filled gutter

overrunning and warping the trim, and that

the painters won’t be coming today

to tape and scrape; their jangling music

of ladders and cans; their radio tunes

and banter.  Instead they gather

around the boss-man, tip cups of hot coffee

to their lips and from underneath

their cap bills murmur in another language

I don’t understand—no boss, no working today.

I think of their patience

for the long view of the job,

what can wait for another day.

 Husband, Burn Pile

 The burn pile rages high and fast

across the point littered

with dry leaves. Flames fork

the late morning sky, and you rake

harder, faster to contain the rage.

White pelicans drift on the lake riffling

with breeze, the only note of cool

this warm morning insists winter waits

offshore, its arrival like a call from the hospital, 

the certainty of its clinical litany,

at once everywhere

and absent like smoke.