Ronda Piszk Broatch

What Did the Lichen Whisper?

Something about tardigrades, the intricate mosses, dew.
Sometimes the soul lives like a weed in the dusk-dark
world between red-breasted sapsucker at the weeping 

crab apple and the moon shell in the planter amongst chives
and early spring mums. Show me your mollusk heart
I say to the sea, and why is it impossible to love the dead 

when they no longer call? The lichen in the bag in the box
was waiting for the dye pot. Lung wort, bark barnacle,
fringed moon, Methuselah’s Beard. And what about moss, 

or how the wren sings long solo tones so spaced apart?
Death song, winged minnow, pretty curl, sheep’s teeth.
And who names where the junco lives, the hairy and downy 

woodpeckers? Last night the coyotes sang a song
I’d never heard, perhaps a dirge, or maybe a ballad
to what bleeds between their teeth. I haven’t lived 

long enough to lose wonder, and often I lose the moon
behind the Douglas firs, the hemlocks, the alders.
Who needs to dig a grave when bones are more easily eaten 

above ground? No antlers remain in the forest, for the mice
have had their fill. A lizard hurries its slow legs as it crosses
the path, reaches the safety of the moss on the other side. 

Something about a song, or a wing, or how the lung fills
with spring, how breath repeats itself, changing its tune
as it goes along.

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Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Fugue (2019), Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry and NPR News/ KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.