Moon’s Healing Glow

by Joan Leotta
 
 
In what was a quiet
moonlit night,
wind pulls clouds around.
Lightning flexes its muscle
setting out to light the night
replacing moon.
Then, in a show of
untethered power
lightning slashes
down, ripping open a line
in the skin of my backyard pine
to mark it as forever “his.”
As quickly as it came,
storm passed.
Winds quiet,
I peer out onto a scene of
branches ripped from trees
patio furniture overturned,
birds who would be sleeping
chirp and search for fallen nests.
Gentle moonlight returns
when wind sends clouds away.
That silver glow attempts to
make beautiful the scars
of our ruptured pine.
Perhaps that light will
heal my scars
as well.


* * * * *

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales featuring food, family, and strong women. Internationally published, she’s a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart nominee, a Best of the Net 2022 nominee, and a 2022 runner-up in the Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, and fiction are in Ekphrastic Review, When Women Write, The Lake, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, anti-heroin chic, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, The Wild, Ovunquesiamo, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Yellow Mama, among others. Her chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon from Finishing Line Press and Feathers on Stone from Main Street Rag.