(Viktor Talashuk/Unsplash)

 

His love endures forever.

                  —Psalm 136

also wrath because

opposites exist

though the brain

has no patience

with this —

denuded hills

slide seaward

ancient pines

buckle in flames

brackish waters

swill over

house tops —



nothing is safe

yet secure

in the brain case

the idea of safe

endures

 

You are worth more than many sparrows

                          —Luke 12:7

He said and every word oscillates,

beginning with You, a shaky proposition,

and are, a temporary condition

and as for many sparrows, how many,

a few or star quantity?



At least the sparrows provide

some credibility, being visible like us,

also here for no apparent reason,

preoccupied with their business,

and just as hungry and clueless.

Elizabeth Poreba is a retired New York City high-school English teacher. She has published two collections of poems, Vexed and Self Help: A Guide for the Retiring, and two chapbooks, The Family Profile and New Lebanon. The eighth line of this poem is from Elizabeth Willis’s poem, “And What My Species Did.” “Ruin from the air” is a reference to the book by the same name, written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts.

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Published in the November 2022 issue: View Contents
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