April 2016
Jean Nordhaus
jfnordhaus@gmail.com
jfnordhaus@gmail.com
My volumes of poetry include Memos from the Broken World (now available at Amazon), Innocence, and The Porcelain Apes of Moses Mendelssohn. I have published my work in American Poetry Review, the New Republic, Poetry and Best American Poetry 2000 and 2007 and in the online poetry journal Innisfree, which presented a selection of my poems in its feature, “A Closer Look.” I live in Washington, DC and currently serve as Review Editor of Poet Lore, the oldest continuously published poetry magazine in the U.S.
With their Wings
for Delia
On the evening you were born
after the tremendous churning
that brought you forth, an owl
flew onto the rail of the balcony
where we sat, as darkness bled
from backlit hills into the sky.
In twilight, she perched on the ledge
measured us with wide, light-
gleaning eyes, then sailed off
on soft wings. Shades of my mother,
I thought, half-believing—the wide-
set eyes and level gaze.
For those who say the dead
have no more truck with us
are wrong. The dead are all around us
feathering the air with their wings.
They see in the fertile darkness
that surrounds this sac of light.
And in these hours we call them back
to steady us, who live in time.
With their Wings
for Delia
On the evening you were born
after the tremendous churning
that brought you forth, an owl
flew onto the rail of the balcony
where we sat, as darkness bled
from backlit hills into the sky.
In twilight, she perched on the ledge
measured us with wide, light-
gleaning eyes, then sailed off
on soft wings. Shades of my mother,
I thought, half-believing—the wide-
set eyes and level gaze.
For those who say the dead
have no more truck with us
are wrong. The dead are all around us
feathering the air with their wings.
They see in the fertile darkness
that surrounds this sac of light.
And in these hours we call them back
to steady us, who live in time.
-from Memos from the Broken World Mayapple Press, 2016
©2016 Jean Nordhaus
©2016 Jean Nordhaus