This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Dana Delibovi.
Crossing Dardenne Prairie
Near Eastertime, thunderheads billowed up
And piled the wide sky over Henke Road.
There, I drove across the fields pocked with
Backhoes, fences, and brand new homes
Built at random on the plow-made landscape.
Soon, fat raindrops splattered on my windshield.
Then fell blinding sheets of rain. I whipped
My wipers to a frenzy just as lightening
Ripped the furious sky, the thick bolts
Vertical and horizontal. I gripped
The wheel and slapped the flooded divots
In the road, slinging fans of water, mud,
And fallen petals from the apple trees.
The bottom edges of the clouds
Grew murky wisps, each a small
Tornado, keen to grab warm air and twirl
Into life. And right above my fleeing car
Rose the giant aluminum crucifix
On Immaculate Conception, set to catch
Heart-fire on the prairie road.
Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her book of translations and essays—Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila—will be published by Monkfish in October 2024. Her work has appeared in After the Art, Apple Valley Review, Bluestem, The Catholic Poetry Room, Confluence, Ezra Translations, Fishbarrel Review, Moria, Noon, Presence, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, U.S. Catholic, and many other journals. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best American Essays notable essayist, and a 2023 winner of the Hueston Woods haiku contest. Delibovi is consulting poetry editor at the e-zine Cable Street. Find her at https://danadelibovi.wordpress.com.
