Loon Calls

I ghost through torched forest
where I used to live
the powdered crowns, the smudge
ash and absence.

Charred twigs snap
a black path to the lake edge.
I pause under a pewter sky.

A loon call winnows from the cold
dark, silent rings ripple as she dives
into water waiting like a tumor.

So much yet to happen
to this tired world,
no way of knowing what.

____

Virginia Boudreau is a retired teacher living on the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Her poetry and prose have appeared in a wide variety of international literary magazines and anthologies. Most recently, her work has been published in Palette Poetry, The Thimble Literary Magazine, Grain, TNQ, and Woods Reader.