Kyle Laws

How to Count

I know every bird in the sky,
   and the creatures of the fields are in my sight.
—Psalm 50

Blue herons head north to ponds off the river.                      
      Prairie chickens flee paths to low brush.

There is a settling of the earth upon its base
      a wrangling down from the tallest spruce.

At night, coyotes call one to the other
      and you think it badgers across the plains.

Wait for the wash of orange across sky in morning.
      Wait for the shortest day.

No fields to tend, no gardens to weed.
      Nothing more to gather.

No Wedding Song

Then the Lord woke as though from sleep,
   like a warrior refreshed with wine.
—Psalm 78

A stir from darkness into the rise of morning
      the color of cantaloupe in an eastern field

no carafe beside the bed, only the push to commode
      in the next room to eliminate nightfall

that fell with thunder as the sun breached mountains
      and tumbled behind them into dust

between one ridge and the next cascading to a mesa
      until only a descent into heartland.

How then do you sit on the edge of a chair
      with eyes down and take off your nightshift?     

 

Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Uncorseted(Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020) Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence coauthored with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize and one for Best of the Net, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.