Raphael Kosek
Raphael Kosek is the author of American Mythology (Brick Road Poetry Press) and two prize-winning chapbooks, Harmless Encounters (2022)and Rough Grace (2014)Her work received 4 Pushcart nominations and was featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily. She served as the 2019-2020 Dutchess County, NY Poet Laureate where she teaches at Dutchess Community College. www.raphaelkosek.com
Baskets
In the grey of early morning
nothing has yet happened.
The day has not
veered off the wrong way.
No one has uttered
a word to regret,
or pulled a soft muscle
against its willingness.
The trees
stand quiet in their cool shadows
and the sun has not yet pried
its yellow fingers
through our windows. Coffee
has not steamed caffeinated
promise and we are only half committed
to rising though we have opened our eyes
into wakefulness where the clean slate
of one more day looms
to fill with more
than we can ever carry in our baskets
laden with small stones,
wounded animals,
and wild, delinquent hope.
Northern Lights
We look long and longingly
up at all the cold stars
nearly ashamed not to
know their names,
their distance—a fantasy.
Just last week, our daughter
saw the ocean in Maine
glowing with bioluminescence
and we too hoped
for our own small taste
of wonder. But the golden
half-moon had gone down
and the trees etched
in charcoal drowned
into the night
and there was no magenta
or green flaming into
the heavens, and the heavy
quiet filled us strangely
like a dinner without food
and we went home
as if blessed—back
to the small world we inhabit
with weighted bodies
somehow made lighter.
