Propitiation

Propitiation

Kelly Sawin

The gardener rises in the scape of a single
cricket’s peal. Before the sun, a cracked half moon
singing light into her eyes and the companion
planet hovering near to watch. She enters the pulse
of sonic day: crouches by the garden in deep squat
and deep sigh, feeling the symphony of chlorophyllic
breath: the plants’ reverberant yawn toward coming
dawn. This is a good hour, before the restless world
wakes with its gasp of television and terror. She hears
the grind of its agitation, sometimes, when evening
swells hot and rubs and rubs its chalky heat into skin
and earth and air. But now the day breaks, cracks
so quickly that light comes pooling like butter.
The distant mountain raises its blinking head from its
pillowy bed. The chill that brought water to the surface
of the land ripping open like a temple curtain as the sun
breaks horizon. The round gong of it disrupting the dark
hush. This is propitiation: theology of dawn: the light
that always comes back casting darkness into outer
irrelevance. The light floods the gardener’s hair
and eye. Shines upon it and was, and is, and is.

---

Kelly Sawin
Poet & Writer

Kelly Sawin is a poet and mother whose work has appeared in River Teeth: Beautiful Things, the Appalachian Review, Susurrus, the Virginia Literary Review, Volume, and elsewhere. She was a finalist in the 2024 National Poetry Series and she holds an MFA from Hollins University. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with her husband and small children.

Photography by Marina Leonova