Red Tail at Formel
Before dawn and out from behind
the guard rail she flew through my light,
her red tail a checkerboard
flash
then dark again and floating in the wake
of morning coming-on. I used to account
a crossing-bird to omens, but out here on
Dead Oak Road the fates display
only when they’re ready and even then
rarely in the form of a hawk. Above
the state highway my lights carved
some fog the creek had made.
She found a dogwood limb and I’m sure
watched me fade. For a while the trucks
held off until a russet spread from out-east.
She shook herself as if to snap
into something.
L. Ward Abel
L. Ward Abel, poet, composer,
teacher, retired lawyer, lives in rural Georgia, has been published hundreds of times in
print and online, including Snow Jewel, The Reader, Yale Anglers' Journal,
Versal, Words for the Wild, After the Pause, Istanbul Review, others, and
is the author of one full collection and eleven chapbooks
of poetry, including Jonesing For Byzantium (UKA Press,
2006), American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little
Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), Digby
Roundabout (Kelsay Books, 2017), and The Rainflock Sings Again (Unsolicited
Press, 2019).
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Poetry