The vibrancy in that small cafe all of us concerned mostly about breakfast. Around the corner wide sky for miles the land, yellow-brown and hard and being city folk from the suburbs we were silenced.
We spotted the familiar from the road. Coneflowers, wild sage, cheatgrass. Saw black-chinned hummingbirds, and a skyline of sandstone cliff shadows huddled as if in conversation, prayer, or the something deeper we were seeking.
At the Narrows water flowed above our hips, our feet arched over river rocks, uncertain as rain clouds.
Later, we laid side-by-side, backs against a boulder lost in the spaces between stars that stared back, raised questions, understood we were too overcome to reply.
J. A. Lagana’s poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Cider Press Review, Heron Tree, Rattle, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collection MAKE SPACE (Finishing Line Press, 2023) and a forthcoming chapbook EDGE of HIGHWAY. She was a finalist for the 2023 Julia Peterkin Literary Award in Poetry. An avid bird-watcher and knitter, she is a founder and former co-editor of River Heron Review and lives in a Bucks County, PA river town where she raised her family. Learn more at jlagana.com.
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