Sara Eddy
Poetry
Sara Eddy is author of two chapbooks: Tell the Bees (A3 Press) and Full Mouth (Finishing Line). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Threepenny Review, Pink Panther, and Raleigh Review. She is Assistant Director of the writing center at Smith College and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
There Should Be a God
I’m one of three cars in this backwoods cathedral
nave, driving between red pine buttresses, stained
glass chiaroscuro dappling my chrome and steel.
I pass a roadkill fox, posed as if sleeping, trickster.
Smoke hangs in the air and makes a sublime sunset, sent
from thousands of miles west, where acres and homes and lives are burning.
There should be a god, a god of anti-plastic to pull this asphalt, these powerlines,
our metal boxes, exhaust, our flimsy desires up into the air, surround
them with smoke and—poof—legerdemain, leave
only trees, wind, animals in darkness.
“ I wrote this poem in my head while driving, as so often happens. On this night, I drove through a remarkable stand of very tall trees crowding the road, and suddenly the road and I felt very small and inconsequential. And maybe disposable, too—which might be the best, for everything. ”
Listen: