Ames Progressive

SKY POEM 1.A.
cataract sky:
i looked up expecting the diamond face of God
and found only a cyclops.
the floating precipitate veils the visaged-view
but makes globes of the fluorescent rust hue
that streams from the streetlights
and illuminates the crow-crowded tree.
they saturate it’s limbs like it’s the only tree in hell,
and it would they take their leave of it,
but they only fly to the end of the light
and reclaim the leaf-left positions they usurped.

SKY POEM 1.B.
a mile outside of town we could look up
and see the diamond face of God,
which in the city is only a
cyclops in a cataract sky.
the trees laid like naked vertebrae
upon the cold night-sheetwhile the cathode ray moon shown
against the phosphor snow
blue, like a screen, and it glowed.