Two Poems by Magda Andrews-Hoke

Fig

Life is a crystal fig
dropped
from a great height.

It’s not
that it might break,
but will.

Inevitably,
it glitters
in the plummeting.

* 

At the Walnut Lane Bridge

Over the bridge, the sun set
in a peach perfume.
Standing by the railing,
I peered into the creek below
and watched the dark
increase by small stitches
of indigo. What I hoped
to find there, I did not find.
And in that searching,
I was blind
to what was there. But
peace, but patience, waiting
stillness, have brought silence
to this qualm. And in its place
a subtle hymn, of softer colors
than the scene.

*

Magda Andrews-Hoke lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she works at the Kelly Writers House. She studied Linguistics and English at Yale University and was a 2019 recipient of the Frederick Mortimer Clapp Fellowship for poetry. Her poems can be found in Commonweal Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere.