Trompe l’oeil on the Capital Beltway

The clouds today are biblical, towering, 
a painted mountain range you can imagine  
Moses running down, robes aflutter, stone  
tablets flung open like shutters. Everyone  
slows down. We try to keep our eyes  
on the road, but we’re drawn to the false  
ceiling of the sky, as if our cars could rise,  
disappear into all this glory, so many grains  
of salt and sand. And I think I understand  
why some look for divinity on high,  
and miss so much of the grounded world— 
two slugs in a yin-yang mating curl, a beetle  
who clings to a swaying blade of grass. 

BRETT WARREN

Brett Warren (she/her) is a long-time editor whose poetry has appeared in Canary, Cape Cod Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hole in the Head Review, Rise Up Review, and elsewhere. Her full-length poetry collection The Map of Unseen Things is forthcoming from Pine Row Press. www.brettwarrenpoetry.com