May 2018
Note: This poem, like a number of mine, started on a solitary walk—my only form of quasi-meditation.
Retired from teaching anthropology and creative writing, respectively, at UC Riverside, my husband and I live in Riverside, California, though we’re both Easterners by birth, and to some degree, by temperament; I’m not sure we’re living in “the golden state” yet. We travel to the Eastern U.S. frequently, to see our daughter who works in international development, and much further afield to see our Foreign Service son, as well as their constantly changing kids.
Retired from teaching anthropology and creative writing, respectively, at UC Riverside, my husband and I live in Riverside, California, though we’re both Easterners by birth, and to some degree, by temperament; I’m not sure we’re living in “the golden state” yet. We travel to the Eastern U.S. frequently, to see our daughter who works in international development, and much further afield to see our Foreign Service son, as well as their constantly changing kids.
After Desolation
The air quivers again
and swoops, scintillates
glinting like flashes
from a spinning
prayer wheel
and the neck stretches up
for the rush in it, the fluster,
the flare—
The wandering mind
hangs its hat on the hushed
notes studding
the telephone wires, settled
like folded black umbrellas
until one, then two, four,
grapple straight up
an air wall—oh grand plans—
and ripple away—
distances—
and the gaze ascends, as if
through the crystalline
spheres, to where
in the high cloudless sky
black specks like bits
of burnt paper—like the remnants
of a life’s complexities swept
from a fire—rise and circle,
calmly weave and float.
Originally published in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Issue 1, Volume 11 (September 2010).
© 2018 Judy Kronenfeld
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