Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.
White Fire
by Lynn D. Gilbert
In chill Midwestern woodlands, toward high spring,
after skunk cabbages and trilliums
have pushed through debris of preceding seasons;
when near-dry creeks have pretty well refilled
but grey mists still doze late in the ravines
and blacktop roads shine dully under thin rains,
then white of dogwood flares in the somber groves
like lighted windows stair-stepped up night slopes.
Each wet branch, black with scarcely a touch of green,
supports a wafted streamer of white fire
borne through the damp and earth-mold smelling air
as if on hidden thread. Woods, so seen,
blaze with the startling glory of new hope;
and yet these four-bract blooms might be dismissed
as commonplace—like orchard pear or apple,
pleasing en masse, but merely picturesque—
if not for the marks of rust at each white tip
like laundered bloodstains, and the fluted curl
of white around each stain, as if to grip
these almost-circles left by ghostly nails.
Originally published in Tipton Poetry Journal
Lynn D. Gilbert's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Arboreal, Blue Unicorn (Pushcart nomination), Consequence, Light, The MacGuffin, Ponder Review (Pushcart nomination), and elsewhere. Her poetry volume has been a finalist in the Gerald Cable and Off the Grid Press book contests. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in an Austin suburb and reviews poetry submissions for Third Wednesday journal.
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print
Previous Renaissance Poets
April Poets