Lisa López Smith
Lisa López Smith is a shepherd and mother making her home in central Mexico. When not wrangling kids or rescue dogs or goats, you can probably find her working on her next novel. Her poems and essays have been published in over fifty literary journals and nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart prize. Her first chapbook was published by Grayson Books in 2021 and her full length collection is forthcoming from Nightwood Editions.
The first rain
Friends,
medicine makers,
backyard alchemists,
anyone midwifing
a bit of hope into
the world—it’s been a steady
decline into dry season madness:
but listen, sister sun witch leans
towards June and the rainy-day
sorceress— clouds singing
of possibility: cheering
cicadas chanting, drops dance
through the sky—
the soil awakening
like arms stretching
slowly Sunday morning,
or a cat, yoga-like,
these months of sun
have stiffened our joints,
our fingers cracked and open,
until at last,
rain.
The earth speaks,
words of musty wild
imagination again,
the first wildflowers’ heartbeats,
surrender, surround
all the good, the true, the beautiful:
it’s in the shout
of the prickly pear, luscious,
sprouting like fingers
on the hand of a nopal,
it’s in the lavender, oily and generous,
each stone and each fragment building
a wider circle, a longer table;
each new seed of requisite
contentedness,
each blossom turning its face to the sun,
the shadows fall behind.
