You can read my commentary about my poem “Lucifer Falls, New York” on the JMWW blog. JMWW published the poem in their summer 2013 issue.
The poem appears in Four Blue Eggs.
Lucifer Falls, New York
Like war planes, a crowd
of raptors scull through the blank
and cloudless sky. One
after another, they stream
over the open paddock
of midsummer green, advance
toward a still and speechless
line of trees. Their portents
reach the forest’s door; needles
of pine brace between hard clay
and treachery. The bone black jaw
of a red-bellied snake ruins
a toad’s last chance for escape.
He is in the middle of it now,
like the fawn whose femur lay
furloughed in the gorge,
trespassing on the slick ink
of river-smoothed black rocks.
Amy Nawrocki 