By Mike Santora

But for me it’s on the swelling
lip of Lake Maracaibo,
in an august before Augusts
where the old lightning
astonished the coast
and made us.

You and me and the New World
warblers, the tyrant flycatchers,
and all lucky thirteen species
of true vireos.

Yesterday, they sang
that it’s okay,
it’s okay.
Grief and grind are so close
in soul and bones.
And as they sang
the rain was just the earth
reading our alluvial fortune.
Look at us, so confident
in our station —
young diamonds in Islay,
unworked Spanish jet.

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Michael Santora received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire. His first chapbook, Sugarflood, was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in Booth, Dukool, Grey Sparrow, and others. He lives in Cleveland, OH with his wife and two children.