Poetry – Issue 4 | April 2009
Three poems by Heather Derr-Smith
The End of a Storm
The eels’ black whips flicker,
Long black lashes
Swaying in the ocean current.
In my bay window is a passionflower vine, clinging
To its profusions, but withering anyhow.
I never gave much thought to beginnings or endings.
The sky is spotted with birds in a black pox.
Clouds of eider and down,
The birds in their cloud costumes,
Their pageant of sky parts:
In come the flapping storms;
Out slinks the spreading fog.
The fish dart in their glass slipper-shapes.
A man’s waiting outside my window
With the face of a white shell,
Curved inward with hundreds of tight teeth.
He was someone to me.
Twigs clatter together,
Encased in transparent bones of ice.
The ice lusts everything, consuming.
The sea disorients with its soft darkness overlapping.
We’ve just come to understand that in winter,
Light comes from the ground.
About the author
A visiting writer at Iowa State University, Heather Derr-Smith has published two books of poetry, Each End of the World (Main Street Rag Press, 2005) and The Bride Minaret (University of Akron Press, 2008). Derr-Smith has volunteered in a refugee camp in Gasinci, Croatia and has traveled to Damascus, Syria to interview Iraqi and Palestinian refugees. Her poems are influenced by multiple experiences and locations around the globe.
Next in Poetry: Public Interest
Previously in Poetry: Euphoric in Essex
