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Clade Song Left

Clade Song 5

The millet was ripe

 and the sparrows and other small birds
 walked among the stalks, feeding
 and singing the praises of god, distant
 cousin to the god three fields to the west
 that had caused the farmer’s well to go dry,
 the millet to grow just inches tall and bear
 no seed. The birds stopped there only briefly—
 they remembered the place from seasons past—
 before joining their comrades to the east.
 O glory, glory, they sang then, forgetting that the rains
 were late again this year, that the glittering streams
 they had bathed in on their way to abundance
 had once been mighty rivers.

 
          
 
Clade Song 5 Right
Beth Spencer runs Bear Star Press (www.bearstarpress.com) and has work published or forthcoming in Split This Rock, Iron Horse Literary Review, River Styx, Weird Year, and elsewhere. A collection of her microfiction is scheduled to be performed by Slow Theatre in Chico in October 2015.  

 

 

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