By L. Ward Abel

Under winter lightning kneel the cattle 

while behind windows  

          I bathe in a flashing room.  

Dreams of sea-level fill thunderheads:  

they drain all darkness down to the Gulf.  

Their song rattles windows  

          hereabouts.  

Someday I’ll die too 

on a course to later fall as rain 

when the cedars bend  

and the air changes just  

enough—then the number ‘one’  

will  

share me  

with about  

          a billion stars.  

About the Author: L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in Rattle, The Reader, The Istanbul Review, The Worcester Review, The Honest Ulsterman, hundreds of others, and he is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including  American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), The Rainflock Sings Again (Unsolicited Press, 2019), Floodlit (Beakful, 2019), and The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021). Abel resides in rural Georgia.