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Beyond
Merrill Oliver Douglas

Beyond the silver SUV whose driver,
in clown makeup, grins and waves;
beyond two helmeted men
on bicycles spinning downhill;
beyond the wind giving the pond
on Ridge Road a rough back scratch;
beyond the cowboy cutout, slouched,
one boot sole propped on a wall not there;
beyond the splayed squirrel, blood pooled
in a wordless balloon by its head;
beyond my fingertip stroking the tail once,
then snapping back to my pocket;
beyond and around and beneath it all
there’s this restlessness, thick in the air
as steam from cider, the whole world
drenched, a seethe of insects flitting
and landing, rasping and dying.

—
Merrill Oliver Douglas is the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, Little Patuxent Review, and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York, where she works as a freelance business writer.

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