Three Poems

Poetry ~ Chella Courington 

​

While the World
 
My droplets fall
in isolation
 
I wrap my head
in a long, black scarf
 
Strip the past from my body
 
Layers of white turn to dust
heap at my feet
 
Remorse rises in my blood
seeps through cracks
 
Only tomorrow’s light can mend
~ 



Different Kind of Spring
 
A coyote trots through a traffic light
oblivious to the red.
 
In clear skies the sun settles near  
washing him in apricot.
 
I wonder if the earth has ever
been so pristine.
 
Behind walls my solitude
turns against me.
 
Every cell of my body screams
for someone to hold.
 
I need more than my books and music
intellect and memory
 
more than my own touch.
~

In the Night
 
     You wait for
the cracked bell
     or single crow
to cry
 
     hear the clacks
of your mother’s
     heels pass
through the gate.
 
     Do you feel lost 
when you crawl out
     of bed
and she isn’t there?
 
     Does inertia pull you
back to her clicking
     on concrete
in a dark station?
 
     You watch the faces (any-
one else you know?)
     behind windows
washed in grit. 
 
     The train stops
spreads shopping bags
     into the day.
You don’t see her.
 
     She promised
again & again
     to be there.
            You don’t see her.
~

​Chella Courington is a writer and teacher whose poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals including Spillway, Los Angeles Review, and Lavender Review. Her novella, Adele and Tom: The Portrait of a Marriage, is available at Breaking Rules Publishing. Originally from the Appalachian South, Courington lives in California.

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