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 Review, Great Lakes Review, Adirondack Review, Chariton Review, Windhover and others. She teaches English at Purdue University.
