VISIONS OF A STORM PETREL

by Alisa Velaj

I don't know whence I am coming.

I proclaim the dead creator to be my enemy

from tomorrow onward.

The storm calls me;

the wave soars to the height of my flight,

and then reconverts to plain sea!

Space after space and beyond,

the wild storm kicks me off my rocker.

Cradle and grave, grave and light

on the horizon of a wave graph.

The boats on the sandy shore once shattered

my insane love for symmetry.

I've had no time to brood

on whatever could or should come through!

Before and after the storm

the sea is mere water, not mighty wave.

The wave is us,

         at the height of our own self.

* * * * *

"Visions of a Storm Petrel" was translated from Albanian by Arben P. Latifi

Alisa Velaj has been shortlisted for the Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in 2014. Her poems have appeared in more than ninety journals and magazines worldwide. Velaj's poetry collection With No Sweat At All will be published by Červená Barva Press in 2019, while another poetry collection, Dreams, will be published by Cyberwit Press during the summer of 2019.