(Phacelia cicutaria)
Unrequited, we look to
tomorrow, feather
and wind in the unexpected.
Already, you have your own
marrow, bone and brilliance,
both ribcage and respite.
We are not to decide
the lock-stepped meaning
of anything sky-written,
already beginning to disappear.
The unkept can only be misunderstood.
Before moonset, we trace small,
wing-shaped silhouettes;
we become shadow puppets
of the sycamore.
Heather Lang-Cassera
Heather Lang-Cassera is a 2022 Nevada Arts Council Literary Arts Fellow, a Tolsun Books publisher, a lecturer with Nevada State College, a 300 Days of Sun Faculty Advisor, and a Clark County, Nevada Poet Laureate Emeritus. She has been published by the North American Review, South Dakota Review, Raleigh Review, and many other publications. She is the author of Gathering Broken Light (Unsolicited Press, 2021), which was written with the support of a Nevada Arts Council grant and won the NYC Big Book Award in Poetry, Social/Political.