January 2020
Robbi Nester
rknester@gmail.com
Bio Note:  Robbi Nester is still plugging away at poetry, watching the world combust around her. She is the author of four books of poetry: a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012) and three collections—A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014), Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017), and Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019). She has also edited two anthologies of poetry: The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes, 2014) and Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees—celebrating the photography of Beth Moon, which was published as a special issue of Poemeleon Poetry Journal. Robbi's poetry has appeared widely in journals and anthologies.

For R

The letter “r” is tricky.
It takes many forms,
sometimes relaxing
into a smooth loop, or
a rabbit, loping across
the page. Sometimes,
like a snail, it slouches
along the length of the line
impersonating an “n.”
In cursive, it rises
and falls, setting off
a gentle ripple—a ring of o’s
in careful script.
In a calligraphic hand,
R kicks like a can-can dancer,
striding the ramp from
cabaret stage to audience
with a risqué air, caught
in the red glare of the
spotlight, raising high
its ruffled skirts. In plain
print, it seems the most
rueful of letters, standing
there ruminating
in the pouring rain.

Dream

Last night, my heavy body
bound me to an earth
as weary and wounded
as myself. But while I slept,
the hills grew green
beneath me—the neon
of new grass, the shade
of hope. Now, I’m bounding
with a body made of light,
closer to the ground,
taking strength
from this new-minted earth.

Camouflage

Removed from its world of light
and shadows, the tiger seems
the definition of conspicuous.
But in the sun-streaked jungle,
this bright coat becomes invisible.
The enormous, too, escapes
the eye because of scale.
The sea distracts us with its regularity,
its lullaby of lapping breakers.
Beneath this skin of sameness lurks
a forest of bright tube worms on the dark
sea floor, or the blue whale, big
as a ten-wheeler, who could swamp
our ships with one flick of a fluke,
but doesn’t, sailing on about
his business, ignoring us, our vessels
mere snags in the sea’s wrinkled silk.
©2020 Robbi Nester
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