Omens
The ancients saw omens
in the stones
and how oddly they settled
after the storm.
Observant of how the frost collected
on the timbers that eventually
they lopped down,
their splinters spelling doom.
They told of harvest
by way of firelight, their grins
reflected from the blood
that pooled at slaughter;
and trembled when
the ox bones,
chiming in the wind,
sang of famine and war.
But here, in the kingdom of modernity,
stopped in my car at a blood-red light,
it seems foolish to feel
connected with those pagan hands,
reaching in chants across the centuries
-their spirits and mine,
a confluence in my skin-
pointing at all these omens
found in each passerby:
sports car,
ambulance,
flower truck-
backdoor ajar,
petals spilling out.
D.A. Lucas is a poet and expat living in Changchun, China, where he teaches composition and rhetoric at Rutgers University Newark Institute’s business school at NENU. His most recent works have appeared in Barking Sycamores, The Blue Nib, and Three Line Poetry.
Amethyst Review 