Laura Rodley, a Pushcart Prize winner, has recently published several notable works. Her books include “Turn Left at Normal” from Big Table Press and “Counter Point” from Prolific Press.

Additionally, she has an upcoming release titled “Ribbons and Moths: Poetry for Children,” set to be published by Kelsay Books.

Hymnal

Inside me is a church.
I carry it with me everywhere I go.
Sitting here at this iron table at the Book Mill
the candles burn around me,
and inside me at the altar of my prayers.

What I mean to say is
I must speak quietly if at all,
and voices sound loud,
as the church doors
I carry within me are always open

and sounds carries,
reverberates on the tuning fork
of my ribs, that absorb
the intent and power
of my own prayers and those

of others. I always try
to answer theirs. If I
cannot succeed, at least

I can echo, I was aware,
I held their prayer
so close to my human heart.

Every Single Step

Where the muscle attaches to the bone
of your left foreleg as though
you are a moor pony harnessed in your traces
to walk the rail lines down the mine
in the darkness, wet air clapping
on the mine shaft, as inside a well
with water not fit to drink;
it doesn’t matter if your mane covers
your eyes, you can’t see in this
darkness but you know the way,
the forelock protects your eyes,
large, and dark, and trusting,
from dust, and from the sudden
blindness when you finally emerge
above ground, unable to see anything
but smell the fresh grass crumpled
in the mud, the familiar tobacco
that the miners chew to offset the taste of coal,
you need no driver to direct you,
you know the way out, and the way back in.
The fullness of the coal cart emptying,
its emptiness your nudge to go back in,
unrelenting, until your final draw
and hay is laid down for you
just inside your stable door.

It’s not the canaries that warn the miners
of trembling ground imminent, it’s
these ponies that refuse to walk on,
these ponies that dig their well-shod hooves in,
these ponies that smell the sulfur
of a fissure, and the clamminess before
an underground stream breaks through
the wall or underneath the rails.
When the ponies refuse to sedately walk
forward, the miners stop, hold their
hand to the wall to feel the earth’s
beating heart: if they have time, they
all make it out, if there isn’t, a plaque
honors their names like the 13 men
who died, trapped on October 19, 1867
five hundred and eighty feet underground
when a fire broke out in the shaft above them
while digging the Hoosac Tunnel,
out of estimated 193 men who died
cutting the four.seven miles through the earth.

Don’t Forget

According to CNN report by Katie Hunt,“Mystery of African elephants dropping dead unraveled by scientists,” released on November 6, according to an analysis published in journal “Nature Communications” on October 25, of the results of 15 blood samples taken from the 35 elephants that died in Zimbabwe between August to November 2020—11 of them within twenty-four hours— revealed evidence of the bacterium Bisgaard taxon 45 that causes septicemia, or blood poisoning, determined as the cause of death, as food and water dwindled during dry season.

We don’t forget, we remember the waterholes
shown to us by the elders:
in Zimbabwe we trekked lumbering our feet
across the arid dry ground, leaves and
twigs, fruits already eaten
by those hungry before us.
It is a fever that starts first as thirst,
no relief from flapping our ears back,
waving dry dust across each others’ backs,
we remember the waterholes our elders
brought us to in times of thirst—
they’ve been here before, but never so long as this.
We don’t forget, we hold all the memories
of the beauty of the running water,
the coolness in the shade, how
you loved each other, all of you—
don’t forget—the rumble of our feet
transmitting messages to each other as
we roam further apart, the sound
of jeeps from rescuers from other years
bringing banana leaves, but this time,
the water holes we remembered
had dried up, you walked too far away
for our message to reach you—turn back.