Migraine

By on Jan 20, 2019 in Poetry

Saint on stained glass window

She tells me it’s like the halos of saints
preceding the onset, then a nightlight
too bright to endure.
                                            Rolled up in old sheets
the color of fever and a blanket
as blue as cobalt, she shades her eyes from
as much of the world as she is willing
to acknowledge.
                        Her words are pained, careful
as feet near the deteriorating
half-way crumble on the Kalalau Trail,
afraid of how deep any fall may go,
how unsteady the climb back up,
                                                              broken,
                                                                              borne.
Pills sort it all out within one, two days,
and she grogs back to normal paths.
                                                              Later,
she tells me, this time wasn’t as bad; she
adds, those saints never did show up, again.

About

Brian Cronwall is a retired English faculty member from Kaua’i Community College in Hawai’i. His poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies in Hawai’i, Guam, the continental United States, Australia, Japan, France, and the United Kingdom, including recent publications in Bamboo Ridge, Chiron Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Ekphrasis, Pinyon, Colere, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Grasslimb, The Carolina Quarterly, The Briar Cliff Review, and others.