by Richard Schiffman
The way the morning yawns a horizon just before sunup
and the sky brightens to a porcelain bowl of ashes.
That trembled hush as night lights blink out like fireflies
and towers teeter up, a troupe of ballerinas surprised
by their own poses. Watching thickets of wooden water tanks
raise ziggurats against the glinting river, and clouds pop out
like blueberries from the porridge of the sky. The way the world
is plucked yet again, a rabbit from some magician’s hat,
and everyone is amazed to be here. And even Gotham blushes,
kissed ruddy by the morning, kissing morning back.
Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet and author of two biographies. His poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and other publications. His first poetry collection, What the Dust Doesn’t Know, was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.
Hawaii Pacific Review 