12 Oct Instincts by Jennifer Campbell
I note the insects’ love language
means: listen. When the solar eclipse
turned 3 p.m. to chilly midnight
and all creatures instantly quieted,
each of us became the lone
apocalypse survivor, unsure
we’d ever known that much quiet,
even for only four minutes.
When the solar switch turned
back on, the birds and cicadas
resumed. So much was already said
in the silence. The tourists
had flocked to Niagara Falls
to gather for the ritual but clouds
gathered instead. Those of us
who looked up, and not through
a camera lens, beheld
the most remarkable blackness
we had ever not seen.
Thunder shakes the wind now,
and I circle back home to witness.
About the Poet
Jennifer Campbell is a writing professor at ECC North, where she received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities. She was a long-time curator of the Center for Inquiry Literary Café series and volunteered as a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters for 19 years.
Jennifer has two full-length poetry collections, Supposed to Love (Saddle Road Press, 2013) and Driving Straight Through (FootHills, 2008), along with a chapbook of reconstituted fairytale poems called What Came First (Dancing Girl Press, 2021). Jennifer’s work has recently appeared in Freshwater, Clockhouse, Literary Heist, and Blood Tree Literature, and is forthcoming in Slipstream, The Healing Muse, and The TONIC.
Related Event
- Jennifer Campbell will join poets Ryki Zuckerman, Gunilla Kester, Ed Taylor, Michelle Kratts, Liz Mariani, and Livio Farallo at the Book Launch event for Slipstream magazine’s Slipstream, Issue 45: Strange Dreams at 6 p.m. on Saturday, October 18th in The Loft at the Book Corner, 1801 Main St Niagara Falls, NY, United States, New York. Refreshments will be provided by the Marketside Restaurant. Prior to the event(starting at 4:30 p.m.), musicians of Jeremiah Traver and Joe Rychlik will perform a set. This event is free and open to the public.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.