March 2018
Penny Harter
penhart@2hweb.net
penhart@2hweb.net
In 2002, after eleven years living in Santa Fe (a mid-life leap after living most of our lives in NJ), my late husband Bill Higginson and I moved back to northern NJ to be closer to family again. Grandchildren started being born, plus we missed our kids. After Bill died in 2008, I moved again, down to the South Jersey shore area to be near my daughter and her family. I am about a forty-minute drive inland, on winding country roads, from the Atlantic Ocean.
I'm in my seventies now (already!) and have weathered the loss of my husband, as well as various health challenges since Bill died, but I'm still here and doing well, thank God. Being able to write my way through my days is a blessing. "Following our bliss," or passion, can sustain us through anything, giving us the opportunity to share and celebrate the events of our lives as we translate them back to ourselves. Once when I was wrestling with a life-changing decision, a poet friend told me "Your poems will know before you do." They did...and continue to do so!
I'm in my seventies now (already!) and have weathered the loss of my husband, as well as various health challenges since Bill died, but I'm still here and doing well, thank God. Being able to write my way through my days is a blessing. "Following our bliss," or passion, can sustain us through anything, giving us the opportunity to share and celebrate the events of our lives as we translate them back to ourselves. Once when I was wrestling with a life-changing decision, a poet friend told me "Your poems will know before you do." They did...and continue to do so!
Note: I find God or the Great Spirit in all things in nature, from endless galaxies to the very cells of our bodies. It is all one, and by being mindful of our blessings, we pray much of the time...not so much in words or deliberate thoughts, though those certainly count, but with hearts and spirits raised in daily gratitude.
A Prayer the Body Makes
In foetal position, our knees drawn up,
arms parallel in supplication, and eyes
rolled back into the skull of sleep,
that dark absence that swallows us or
covers us with climbing ivy—evergreen
from birth to death. A prayer the body
makes beyond words, beyond the unheard
frequencies of cells broadcasting into
the abyss, beyond the arc of another body
curling warm against our own, ribs
rising and falling. Translate, the mind
demands. Translate this prayer that we
may all practice it together. Translate the
body’s pores breathing in, breathing out,
breathing in, breathing out—asleep or
awake—in the wordless center holding all.
[Previously published in Persimmon Tree as one of the winners of the "Poets From the East Coast States" contest]
Tulip
I watched its first green push
through bare dirt, where the builders
had dropped boards, shingles, plaster—
killing everything.
I could not recall what grew there,
what returned each spring,
but the leaves looked tulip,
and one morning it arrived,
a scarlet slash against the aluminum siding.
Mornings, on the way to my car,
I bow to the still bell
of its closed petals; evenings
it greets me, light ringing
at the end of my driveway.
Sometimes I kneel
to stare into the yellow throat,
count the black tongues,
stroke the firm red mouth.
It opens and closes my days.
It has made me weak with love,
this god I didn't know I needed.
[Previously published in Turtle Blessing, La Alameda Press, 1996]
Amazing Grace
in Echo Canyon, New Mexico
Deep in the canyon, I begin to sing Amazing Grace.
Far above us, white-throated swifts dart in and out
of crevices in this curved embrace of red rock
holding the cerulean sky.
That was my mother's favorite song.
Please sing it again, another tourist asks,
her eyes filling.
Each phrase shimmers around us, counterpoint
to canyon winds; ancient sediment flows down
the rock-face onto a bed of red dust; the stone
lion crouched on the edge of the highest cliff
lowers his head,
and the dust rises.
[Previously published on-line in Your Daily Poem, 2012]
Above the Rio Grande, Pilar, New Mexico
Fallen on the edge of a dirt road,
midway between the gorge depths
and the overhanging cliffs
where rocky ledges sheer off
into space, this stone
shaped by wind and water
is a miniature mountain,
tawny as the river
that wanders far below.
Its slanting peak folds
to embrace a solitary figure
emerging from its side, a guardian
whose featureless face tilts blindly
toward the furnace of the sun,
the glimmer of the stars.
Our Lady of the Mountains,
small spirit of granite
whose shrine is the side of the road,
pray for us here where the Earth
is rock and water,
wind and dust.
[Previously published in Lizard Light: Poems from the Earth, Sherman Asher Publishing, 1998]
In foetal position, our knees drawn up,
arms parallel in supplication, and eyes
rolled back into the skull of sleep,
that dark absence that swallows us or
covers us with climbing ivy—evergreen
from birth to death. A prayer the body
makes beyond words, beyond the unheard
frequencies of cells broadcasting into
the abyss, beyond the arc of another body
curling warm against our own, ribs
rising and falling. Translate, the mind
demands. Translate this prayer that we
may all practice it together. Translate the
body’s pores breathing in, breathing out,
breathing in, breathing out—asleep or
awake—in the wordless center holding all.
[Previously published in Persimmon Tree as one of the winners of the "Poets From the East Coast States" contest]
Tulip
I watched its first green push
through bare dirt, where the builders
had dropped boards, shingles, plaster—
killing everything.
I could not recall what grew there,
what returned each spring,
but the leaves looked tulip,
and one morning it arrived,
a scarlet slash against the aluminum siding.
Mornings, on the way to my car,
I bow to the still bell
of its closed petals; evenings
it greets me, light ringing
at the end of my driveway.
Sometimes I kneel
to stare into the yellow throat,
count the black tongues,
stroke the firm red mouth.
It opens and closes my days.
It has made me weak with love,
this god I didn't know I needed.
[Previously published in Turtle Blessing, La Alameda Press, 1996]
Amazing Grace
in Echo Canyon, New Mexico
Deep in the canyon, I begin to sing Amazing Grace.
Far above us, white-throated swifts dart in and out
of crevices in this curved embrace of red rock
holding the cerulean sky.
That was my mother's favorite song.
Please sing it again, another tourist asks,
her eyes filling.
Each phrase shimmers around us, counterpoint
to canyon winds; ancient sediment flows down
the rock-face onto a bed of red dust; the stone
lion crouched on the edge of the highest cliff
lowers his head,
and the dust rises.
[Previously published on-line in Your Daily Poem, 2012]
Above the Rio Grande, Pilar, New Mexico
Fallen on the edge of a dirt road,
midway between the gorge depths
and the overhanging cliffs
where rocky ledges sheer off
into space, this stone
shaped by wind and water
is a miniature mountain,
tawny as the river
that wanders far below.
Its slanting peak folds
to embrace a solitary figure
emerging from its side, a guardian
whose featureless face tilts blindly
toward the furnace of the sun,
the glimmer of the stars.
Our Lady of the Mountains,
small spirit of granite
whose shrine is the side of the road,
pray for us here where the Earth
is rock and water,
wind and dust.
[Previously published in Lizard Light: Poems from the Earth, Sherman Asher Publishing, 1998]
© 2018 Penny Harter
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