Sitting in the church alone, I mistook a night train
for ghostly organ music
then on the drive home caught sight of a black
silhouette waiting at the edge of the highway—
the kind of quick, phantom blip
you’re not sure is real or imagined.
I did not pray, like usual, to keep it safe, whatever it was,
and the next day—
Speaking of prayer, at the end of childhood
I would lie awake and pray for true love so hard
in that apartment bedroom with the French doors,
white curtains, old mail slot in the wall
from its life as some other room in a whole house.
What is the significance? is a question one might ask.
It’s the way a stray moment brands you, some random thing—
crossing the marshy field kids with secondhand stories
of lightning strikes
the storm coming over the mountain,
more than just a threat
bruised violet and electric.
—I am faced with the coyote’s crumpled form,
so ordinary, so unremarkable,
its ears soft for no one in particular,
flicking in the wake of traffic.
—Natalie Homer
Natalie Homer is the author of Under the Broom Tree (Autumn House Press). Her recent poetry has been published in The Journal, Cream City Review, Potomac Review, Josephine Quarterly, and others. She received an MFA from West Virginia University and lives in southwestern Pennsylvania.