Poetry
Henrietta DuCap
Plant vs. Plant: Cooley Gardens
A glint of summer strikes
Like flint, igniting the skies
Above the parked cars,
Their motors as silent as the
Factory in evening.
Behind the plant, three stems rise.
Past the gate,
Its iron the final thing
Wrought rather than grown,
Slimmer stems sway among broad
Leaves, and the mouths of the
Orange lilies open to drink the sun.
Oculus
When in Rome one
Autumn night, I celebrated
The ending of my
Undergraduate degree
By standing among
The marble saints of the Pantheon
Gazing up into the stars,
The black oculus acting as
A portal to the heavens.
Another autumn night, in Lansing, I
Celebrated my new job
By posing on the top
Of a parking garage,
And in each photo we took
The dome of the Capitol glowed,
Among the stars a marble moon.
And this is why no one can convince me
That Rome is any holier
Than the ordinary and the local,
If we both look at the same sky
And wonder what is beyond it.
Henrietta DuCap earned her B. A. in Creative Writing. Her poetry has been published in Ekstasis, Vessels of Light, The Way Back to Ourselves, Solid Food Press and more. She lives in Lansing, Michigan with her husband and baby girl, and her middle-grade historical fiction novella is forthcoming through Hidden Shelf Publishing. Her social media handles are "Henrietta DuCap, Author" on FB and @henrietta.ducap.author on IG.