Martha Silano

I HAVE THOUGHTS FED BY THE SUN,

and I have thoughts fed by fear.
The sun-thoughts leave me clumsy,

giddy. Tumbling into persuadable lakes.
The fear-thoughts are like the crows

claiming my neighbor’s chimney,
make of my brain a panic closet.

My sun-thoughts beam me back
to the iridescence of starlings,

while fear knits a dark petticoat
of macabre, a dance so not like

an Oregon swallowtail. Wild
carrot it’s not, nor the sage

of the high desert plains.
Here: take this dark one,

replace it with a daisy,
with the sun beating down

on the two cherry trees in my yard,
the fruit so difficult to reach.

MARTHA SILANO (1961-2025) was the author of eight poetry collections, including Terminal Surreal (Acre Books, 2025), about her journey with ALS, Last Train to Paradise: New and Selected Poems (Saturnalia Books, 2025), and This One We Call Ours (Lynx House Press, 2024), winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize. Her poems appeared in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry. Her awards included North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize and The Cincinnati Review’s Robert and Adele Schiff Award.