Transmutation
He’d drop fire and “furry,”
the headline mistakenly
said, and all I could see
were Siamese cats and
dachshunds and cottontails
raining down on those
blue-shrouded mountains, people
laughing or shouting or screaming,
all of them reaching out their
arms to save whatever they could.
Vivian Wagner lives in New Concord, Ohio, where she teaches English at Muskingum University. She's the author of a memoir, Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), and a poetry collection, The Village (Kelsay Books). Visit her website at www.vivianwagner.net.