by Wendi White
May the dawn break your heart with gladness.
May you walk the beach at sunrise early enough to see
crabs scurry sideways to their pews,
pelicans lift their ponderous forms into the air
like a choir rising for an opening hymn.
May you witness waves folding themselves in prayer
as a platinum splash of sun spills
from a stained-glass sky,
gathering at the ocean’s edge in communion.
*
Wendi White comes to Norfolk by way of The People’s Republic of Austin, Vermont, Boston, Mexico, Guatemala, The Philippines, and originally, the Adirondack Mountains of New York. She was lured to Tidewater by a siren’s song promising fried oysters and crab cakes on a regular basis. She is now a first year student in the Creative Writing Program at ODU where she writes poetry about our only planet and its future. Ms. White’s poem “Galilei’s Glass” was the Graduate winner of Old Dominion University’s 2011 College Poetry Prize. Her poem “Benediction” received an Honorable Mention.