December 2017
I am the author of a poetry collection titled Tending and a handbook of alternative education, Free Range Learning, with a book of essays due out soon. I live on Bit of Earth Farm where I spend too much time reading, cooking weird things, and singing to livestock. Connect with me at lauragraceweldon.com.
Earthbound
Are we supposed to settle for a planet
lagging behind our expectations?
We want reversible time,
admission into past or future
easy as changing our minds.
We want teleportation, so we can
zip anywhere for the afternoon,
maybe Iceland or Argentina,
where we'll make new friends,
agree to meet up for lunch
next week in Greece
on only an hour's break.
We want to get past
greed and suffering and war,
enough already.
And death? That's awfully primitive
for souls with so much left to learn.
That said, this planet does a lot right.
Birds, for one.
Water in all its perfect manifestations.
Those alive poems called trees.
The way a moment's glance
can reveal a kindred spirit.
Which we all are, really.
The oneness between self and everything
is this planet's secret, kept imperfectly.
That's more than we might expect.
Although time travel would be nice.
Aluminum Epiphany
Spreading his fingers
over roofing samples,
soft hands soundless
against metal
slick as his promotional pitch
the salesman
tells us
Aluminum is the mineral
Mother Nature and Father Time
use to make gems.
His voice moves on to
warranties and prices,
though his words send me
journeying.
I see
archeologists of the future
uncover long-buried suburbs
shining
with inexplicable
treasure.
They find houses
sided in emeralds,
beer cans transformed
into opal cylinders,
lawn chairs of topaz,
ruby cooking pots.
They brush away
the perilous dust of that age,
careful to decontaminate
before returning home
to their children
who dream of ancient people,
awe-struck
at what it must have been like
to grow up
in the heart of
such indifferent opulence.
Appears in the collection, Tending (Aldrich Press, 2013).
Feral
Moonlight leaks through the curtains.
I lie awake, listen to coyote songs
circle and connect, stitching together
the night's raw edges.
Each time I hear their howls
my bone marrow sings.
What's muzzled in me lifts.
I seem silent and still,
yet my pulse races through the trees.
Unwritten
Characters carry on behind my eyebrows
no novel to live in
though their sagas continue
while I pick tomatoes and herbs,
put water on to boil
drop onions in butter,
spread dinner’s fragrance through the house
and out the windows.
In the pantry, potatoes I harvested
wrinkle around burgundy and green rosettes
and from these eyes, pale tendrils
fragile with new life,
seek light's thin promise
from a door left ajar.
I pare them onto newspaper,
long peels covering destruction and chaos.
Contemplate these lumpy tubers
pulled from soil like alive stone,
eyes seeking light beyond shadow
never to root or grow.
I swallow flavors
of what might have been,
shut windows, turn on lamps,
and let evening close today’s eyes.
Finally, Then
After dinner is over, dishes clean,
their porcelain lips stacked in smiles
behind the cupboard door.
After your desk is organized,
emails sent, final draft finished,
your to-do list a flock of check marks
like migratory birds flapping
down the column and out
to the horizon of a light-suffused land
called Everything is Done.
Finally, you can do whatever it is
you say you've always wanted to do.
Or not said, because naming can sometimes
dilute a dream's dark essence.
But there's a bank overdraft to fix,
unread library books to return,
another doctor's appointment,
and these days when you accelerate,
your car makes a screaming noise
like a small trapped animal.
You can picture its curled body
and dark eyes, terrified your speed
will toss it onto the moving parts
of a machine made only to go go go.
Maybe, after you get it fixed,
clear up a few other things,
finally, then, you'll have time.
"Earthbound" was first published in Writing for Peace, annual anthology (2015).
“Feral" was first published in Shot Glass Journal, issue 21 (2016).
"Unwritten" was first published in Oasis Journal (2016).
"Finally, Then" was first published in Great Lakes Review (March, 2017).
©2017 Laura Grace Weldon
“Feral" was first published in Shot Glass Journal, issue 21 (2016).
"Unwritten" was first published in Oasis Journal (2016).
"Finally, Then" was first published in Great Lakes Review (March, 2017).
©2017 Laura Grace Weldon
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