February 2018
Laurel Peterson
laurelpeterson@att.net
laurelpeterson@att.net
I’ve been writing since I was eight, despite being told that I shouldn’t. Writing revealed too much. This is why I tell my students they should never be afraid to put the truth on the page. I’m a community college English professor, who alternately loves and despairs of her students (read the assignment!). I’ve written lots of different things—newspaper columns, academic stuff, poems (including two chapbooks and a full-length collection) and two mystery novels, both published by Barking Rain Press. I have the very great pleasure of serving the town of Norwalk, Connecticut, as its poet laureate. At this very moment, my dog is sniffing through my trash for a draft of something to chew on. My website: www.laurelpeterson.com
INSIDE/OUTSIDE
Outside, the vast universe,
wider and deeper than our dreaming,
expands, even as we stand here looking,
faster than we could ever travel,
as if anyone would want
to be at the edge,
looking at the nothing
into which we are moving.
Inside, a pod of oxygen
close around us, thin skin of air,
tissue thin, like lotion
or sunlight squares on the floor
or the understanding
between two people who love,
thinking we have all that air, so much
that it will never run out,
like love will never run out,
like the universe will never run out,
as we ride it toward its roaring edge.
INSIDE/OUTSIDE
Outside, the vast universe,
wider and deeper than our dreaming,
expands, even as we stand here looking,
faster than we could ever travel,
as if anyone would want
to be at the edge,
looking at the nothing
into which we are moving.
Inside, a pod of oxygen
close around us, thin skin of air,
tissue thin, like lotion
or sunlight squares on the floor
or the understanding
between two people who love,
thinking we have all that air, so much
that it will never run out,
like love will never run out,
like the universe will never run out,
as we ride it toward its roaring edge.
© 2018 Laurel Peterson
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