Kathryn de Lancellotti

The Meadowlark

I feel guilty picking lavender,
and stepping on stones.
I see a ladybug land in my son’s hair
and let it rest awhile.
A long-legged spider weaves a home into the corner.
A reoccurring dream
of a recluse in my bed, I try to kill it with a shoe
but it gets me first.
I’m the one the mosquitoes want to drink,
the sucker for love, the meat.
I see a cloud and think I could live here,
the sun is peeking through the pine
the vine is climbing the trunk.
We all need a host to carry us.

Sometimes I cry to the lark.
Sometimes I beg for its wings.

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Kathryn de Lancellotti is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a former recipient of the Cowell Press Poetry Prize and the George Hitchcock Memorial Poetry Prize. Her poems and other works have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Press Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, The American Journal of Poetry, Rise Up Review, The Bind, Cultural Weekly, Bending Genres, Quarterly West, Rust + Moth and others. Her debut chapbook Impossible Thirst will be forthcoming with Moon Tide Press in 2020. Kathryn resides in Harmony, California with her family.