lightning twists across cloud-dark sky in a shock of silver filament.
The gray-misted marsh is muted by rain’s flailing curtain.  Last thunder
rumbles off,  raindrops slow.  Shore color returns with emerging sun—
lime, sienna, mahogany, darker tones at the tree line across the roiling river.
A lone white egret dazzles.

BARBARA SEGAL, poet and visual artist, is published in Oberon, Mobius, The Avocet, Long Island Sounds, Bards Annual, NCPL Society Review, and the PPA Review, for which she was a first prize winner.  She is a member of Poets Circle in Pt. Washington, and is currently finalizing a chapbook.  Her work is influenced by the worlds of spirit and nature.