Thunder

Sometimes walls cannot be taken down
with a hammer.

Sometimes you must allow yourself
to seep through them

slowly.  You must vibrate blue-
violet light    bending the rays

blending them into a fine
thin periwinkle

that creeps in & brings with it
tidal pools & estuaries

clouds & moss.  Once in
you will see that the walls

are not smooth but cracked
& gaunt in places

porous even.  You will find
violins & cats & sparks

waiting to become stars.
All long for your hands

to pluck & stroke them
into glissando & nova

arpeggio & purr—you will have
your cadenza as sun

breaches stone & pincushion
moss fans out to corners.

Then the white oaks will take over
their taproots pulling apart

the foundations of walls
yet you must stay

long after their crumbling
to stretch bow across string

fingers across feline back
eyes across nightfall of space

& hum your violaceous verve
so that pinwheel petals

spin in mistral while delta flows amply
over field where walls once stood

& out to ocean’s thunder.

T.M. thomson’s work has been featured in several journals, including Wild Age Press, These Fragile Lilacs, and Borrowed Solace, most recently appearing in The Roanoke Review and Camas. Her poetry will be featured in upcoming issues of The Blue Ash Review and Jelly Bucket. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards: “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005, “I Walked Out in January” in 2016, and “Strum and Lull” in 2018. She has co-authored Frame and Mount the Sky, a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry (2017) and is author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter/. When she’s not writing, she can be found communing with cats, playing in mud, or spinning.