EDGE EFFECT

 

First day of summer, overcast morning after rain

all night. Lights on in every room. The dripping woods

 

lean close to the house, so this lamplit room

becomes a room inside a room of trees and weeds,

 

their leaves, a multitude of shapes and shades of green

and the sky, a close gray ceiling heavy with rain.

 

When I pass between the lamp’s yellow glow

and the window, a young deer, ruddy and feeding

 

on wild black raspberries at the wood’s edge, startles,

leaps through the wall of green, disappears

 

the way we all hope to pass, one verdant world

into the next, suddenly, and with grace.

 

Daye Phillippo’s work has appeared in Literary Mama, Shenandoah, Natural Bridge, Comstock Review, Fourth River, Cider Press ReviewGreat Lakes Review, Adirondack Review, Chariton Review, Windhover and others. She teaches English at Purdue University.

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