Judy Kronenfeld Verse-Virtual 2017 June

June 2017

My fourth full-length collection of poems, Bird Flying through the Banquet, came out from FutureCycle Press in March, and I’m just delighted to have been able to work with editor Diane Kistner, who is, simply put, a peach. Retired from teaching in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, I volunteer for a local literary arts nonprofit, help edit the online magazine, Poemeleon, and write poems, nonfiction and the occasional story. I have lived with my husband in Riverside since 1969 (in a now long-emptied nest), but my Wordsworthian place will always be the New York City of my childhood and teenage years. For more information, and a selection of my poems and prose, please see http://judykronenfeld.com.

Variation on a Line from Merwin

Each day on the long drive home
how easily the sky
soars into profundity,
like silent music.

In roiled vertical seas,
shoals of cloud boil up--
empty angel tiers--

then melt
into the molten stream.

Still my heart lifts
as I round the last curve.
It is dark. The universe
glides by

and my drowned heart opens,
not knowing to what.

-Originally published in California State Poetry Quarterly 15, No. 3 (Winter 1988-89).

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF