Named Storms

Maura Way

Our dormant crabs skip
Nor’easters. Whole bushels
play hooky under estuaries.
Hunker us down, Mister
Savory.  Follow obelisked
bellies beneath silt and
sediment, only antennae
to be seen with naked eyes.
Docile now, havens of grace.

A far more insipid frenzy
coils above, the predictable
clawing for stillness. Then
icy laments. Impatient detritus
must suspend its unhinged life
cycle. Our invisible antennae
became deadened to the call of
eventual winter—cannot even
pick up snow. Frozen in fury,
in the flames of our untenable
longing for a perpetual spring.

Originally from Washington, DC, Maura Way lives in Greensboro, NC, by way of Boise, ID. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Verse, The Chattahoochee Review, FugueDIAGRAM, The Potomac, The Ocean State Review, and Beloit Poetry JournalAnother Bungalow, her debut collection, was released by Press 53 in 2017. She teaches 9th and 12th grade English at New Garden Friends School. Information about readings and events is at mauraway.com or @anotherbungalow. Maura has been a schoolteacher for 22 years.