An Education
by Morgaine Baumann
When I was ten I found the perfectly
preserved body
of a cicada
in a parking lot.
Before that
I’d thought the heat could speak.
In the ravine below our house
rabbits wailed
at night.
I lived there as a child,
watched a pack of coyotes
rip meat from bone.
In a dream
the screams I heard made the dry grass bend and fold in on itself,
golden points hiding churning beds of katydids.
back to University & College Poetry Prizes