Jayne Marek

 
Jayne Marek
 
Drowned Mole
 
At the side of the path, you lie fat as a lost sock. Lobed toes spread in surprise as you entered the light that was your darkest burrow. A handful of slategray, your fur sleek as a rich matron’s coat on opening night. Sheen of stars across it, a galaxy of sand. Forced from the tight channel of earth that pulsed with water, the throat of a whale. The god of moles, humble and significant. Forgive this stick that lifts you at ribs and hips. I love your defenseless tummy, turned up, no longer pleading. Your nose, chill-blanched, splays like tendrils of a spring flower. It is morning, pink, a slightly bared gum.
 
 
 
Jayne Marek’s poems and art photos have appeared in publications such as Gravel, Blast Furnace, Panoply, Gyroscope, Flying Island, Lantern Journal, Siren, Spillway, Driftwood Bay, Tipton Poetry Journal, Isthmus, The Occasional Reader, Wisconsin Academy Review, and Windless Orchard, and in anthologies: And Know This Place: Poetry of Indiana and the 2012 Cincinnati Writers Project collection. Her chapbook, Imposition of Form on the Natural World, was brought out by Finishing Line Press (2013), and a co-authored book, Company of Women: New and Selected Poems, appeared from Chatter House Press (2013). The shorelines of the Midwest and Northwest have provided her with daily glimpses of nature’s beauty and drama.