Mid-Lent

Mid-Lent

Tamara Nicholl-Smith

This day is blooming roses, tinting
the ink-stained sky of night’s long passage
in garnet pale exhale. I sit
in blushed reprieve and cup my hands

to capture soft rain, drink spring’s wine
in crisp light sips through lips of dust,
and damp my dry throat. Soon I shall
be wrapped in lilies, soon the chalice

will be more than my hands, between
which the rain slips, and soon, I shall
drink more than these slight sips. This ends
one way: my heart a flame of roses.

---

Tamara Nicholl-Smith
Poet & Community Builder

Tamara’s poetry has appeared on two Albuquerque city bus panels, one Albuquerque parking meter, various radio shows, a spoken-word classical piano fusion album, and in publications such as the Mutablis Press anthologies Enchantment of the Ordinary and Chaos, Dive, Reunion, Kyoto Journal, The Examined Life Journal, Catholic Arts Today and America.  She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston. She enjoys puns and likes her bourbon neat. 

Photography by Marek Piwnicki