A Sample of Poetry

Patricia is cruising the Greek Islands this week. Her friend Lenny Lianne shares some of her poetry. 

Lenny is the author of three books of poetry and is an independent researcher. She holds a MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from George Mason University, a MA in Women’s Studies from George Washington University and a BA in History from George Mason University.

She’s given workshops and poetry readings on both coasts of the U.S. When not traveling to exotic places around the world, she and her husband live in Arizona. She blogs about poetry at Passport to Poetry

 

IT BEGINS

 

When the short-tailed song thrush

    repeats its series of notes

two or three times, she thinks

    it must be her mother’s spirit

telling her again to remember

    she is loved, always.

The cordial linnet’s call

    seems like another prompt.

Even the wheezy song of the siskin

    suggests her mother’s last words

that love will locate her if only

    she believes in its abundance.

In time the girl forgets the feel

    of her mother’s hands holding her

close, but the whispered words

    hover, delicate as dust motes,

or return, like the past itself,

    to circle through certain instants.

In between, the future of her story

    is forever present.

            from The Gospel According to the Seven Dwarfs

            San Francisco Bay Press, 2010

IRISES

Irises by Vincent van Gogh

Outside the asylum, an overgrown garden

borders a courtyard where, my first week here,

I notice a surfeit of irises and set up my easel

to paint near a plain, unperturbed fountain.

From discrete distances, the other patients

watch as I work; they don’t disturb me.

Later when I walk through the arched hallways

of the hospital, I hear their howls and ravings.

I think I have done well to come here as I am

starting to discard my dread.  Others too

vouch they hear voices and strange sounds

during their attacks.  And that lessens the horror.

On canvas, I paint fragile petals, lapis blues

to indigo.  I try to capture each peculiar pivot

and bend of every head, even the one white

blossom almost on the edge of other frantic,

and frail, flowers

            from Frenzy of Color, Reverie of Line

             San Francisco Bay Press, 2010

AND TOMORROW, A WILDERNESS OF RICHES

            late December, 1601 on the Susan Constant, Godspeed and the Discovery

We could almost taste the gold,

all of us so hungry for easy riches,

even the ambitious English gentlemen,

mostly upper crust subsequent sons

with no landed inheritance.

This was the whispered promise,

still immanent and fresh,

that we were headed for a land,

lavish in gold and silver, translucent

pearls and fruit, all bountiful

and ready for picking.

Even for the six carpenters, the mason,

two bricklayers, the blacksmith,

the tailor, drummer and barber,

for all the laborers and the four boys,

the past was a place of fog and smoke

and tomorrow, a wilderness of riches,

where even the air would be sweeter.

This vision clung to us

the way the long horizon held

onto the sky.  Daily we looked out,

past the scud and slap of the water,

and waited for the land of wealth

to present itself like a new bride.

from A Wilderness of Riches, Voices from the Virginia Colony 

ScriptWorks Press, 2008