"[It was a ritual, a simple splash]" by Simon Perchik

It was a ritual, a simple splash
would refill the Earth the way this cup
spills over with birds — what you heard

was a cloud brushing against the sky
as feathers — yes, the first morning
and the finished sun was poured

where your lips would be for evenings
— even now every sound from above
is sacred, enters the ground

as the voice the beginning sun longed to hear
by reaching down for another voice
in the waiting moon that's no longer cold.

Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Reflection in a Glass Eye, published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information, including free e-books and his essay, “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8

Headshot: Rossetti Perchik

Photo Credit: Staff