Poems by Mary Moore
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Fortune
by Mary Moore
From Canary Fall 2016
Mary Moore, who grew up among orange groves of the South Coast Water Region in California, now lives in the Ohio River Valley near Four Pole Creek in the Guyandotte Watershed.
The landscape cleaves to the future,
a cascade of wooded ridges and views
going forever, implying it too, but the straggling
rows of trees, poplar, maple, oak,
wanderers who rooted where they fell,
are not clues to a future but gambling's
green markers, droppings grown up into real trees
and pledged to yield more, like Mendel's
smooth and creased seeds, the look of which
distinguished the luckier kinds of peas.
The beautiful pews of the ridges aligned
behind the park invite me.
Clouds perch on the fortunate
trees. Luckily, chance is my church.
© Mary Moore