The Moon Rises, The Sun Falls by Elizabeth Edelglass
after Mary Oliver
I do not have to be good.
Baseballs crack windows,
teacups spill, saucers shatter, umbrellas
splinter in the wind. The moon
rises, the sun falls, quarters
disappear in telephone slots,
nickels and dimes all spent.
Does life have a bull’s eye,
and can I hit it?
Wishing wells spout geysers
to the stars,
manholes gape at my feet.
Elizabeth Edelglass is a fiction writer and book reviewer who finds herself writing poetry in response to today’s world—personal, national, and global. Her first published poem recently appeared in Global Poemic, and she has poetry forthcoming in Sylvia and in Stay Salty, a Read Furiously anthology. Her fiction has won the Reynolds Price Fiction Prize, The William Saroyan Centennial Prize, the Lilith short story contest, and the Lawrence Foundation Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review.