On Lemon Road
Photo by Gilley Aguilar
A Poem by Ann Val
We walk down Lemon Road,
where street lamps emit
a foggy glow on asphalt—
like that dark glob of night when
the Creator said: “Let there be light,”
and a single match struck, or a fire kindled
in the stars, or a lightbulb flickered on.
Whichever way it happened, it was good.
And it was enough.
Here, on Lemon Road,
cicadas hum in the elm tree
like a symphony of a thousand violins
plucked in a single, low, repetitive note
the way God’s voice might’ve hummed
over the created earth proclaiming
it was good, it was enough.
Leaving Lemon Road behind,
darkness hides in my heart, worrying over
the kitchen’s mold, the children’s lice, the sickness invading,
and just as Mary trembled at the sight
of the angel who shone in her room
and told her not to fear, or earlier, much earlier,
when light shone into the wormhole and goodness
entered, so it is on an asphalt street
the holiest moment illuminates the mundane,
the ordinary, the difficult.
Even on this humble Lemon Road
it is good, and it is enough.
Kris Ann Valdez is a proud Arizona native with a husband, three spunky children and an overzealous dog. Her fictional work placed second in the international 2024 “First Page” story contest with Joann Dempsey, while her nonfiction work appears in the upcoming N.Y.T. bestseller sequel to “So God Made a Mother,” and is published in Motherwell, Ekstasis Magazine, Calla Press, Clay Jar Press, among others.
