Homecoming by Carla Martin-Wood

The air is a-buzz with wings
bird to butterfly
bee to dragonfly
flit, fly and flutter by

cherry trees lifting petticoats to heaven
full-blossomed defiance
caught mid-cartwheel
kicking up chaos
in can-can regalia
long-limbed show-offs
in ruffles and bloomers
late and early
daffodils and Japanese magnolia
crocus and iris and tulips cover places
old winter (that cold-handed lover)
has relinquished at last
bright spindled forsythia
lilies and redbud
double flowering peach
too much is not enough

this is earth in an Easter dress

and all because Persephone
called ahead to say
Mama — I’m comin’ home!

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Four times nominated for The Pushcart Prize, Carla Martin-Wood is the author of the recently released Songs from the Web (encore), as well as One Flew East, Flight Risk and How we are loved, all full-length collections of her poetry (Fortunate Childe Publications). She has authored seven chapbooks: Songs from the Web (Bitter Wine Press); Garden of Regret and Redheaded Stepchild (both Pudding House Chapbook Series); Feed Sack Majesty, HerStory, and The Last Magick (all Fortunate Childe Publications); and Absinthe & Valentines (Flutter Press). Carla’s work also appears in the following anthologies:   Love Poems & Other Messages for Bruce Springsteen and Casting the Nines (both Pudding House Publications); Lilith: a collection of women’s writes and Postcards from Eve (both Fortunate Childe Publications); and From the Front Porch (Silver Boomer Books). Her work has appeared in a plethora of journals in the US, England, and Ireland since 1978. She was recently nominated by Flutter Poetry Journal for Best of the Net 2010. Carla is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory at http://www.pw.org. To see more of Carla’s poetry on WIZ go here and here.

“Homecoming” was previously published in Leaf Garden Press.

*contest entry*

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