March 2020
Bio Note: After having lived for years in North Jersey, then eleven years in Santa Fe, NM, my late husband, William J. (Bill) Higginson
and I moved back to northern NJ. In 2009 shortly after Bill died, I moved down to the Jersey shore area to be near my daughter and her family.
I was moved to write "The Oracle" after listening to shrieks of raccoons outside my window in North Jersey, and about the Snowy Owl since a number of
them have been showing up recently along the Jersey shore.
I'm widely published in journals, both print and on-line, and my most recent collections are The Resonance Around Us and Recycling Starlight, both from Mountains and Rivers Press. My new collection A Prayer the Body Makes will be published summer 2020 by Kelsay Books / Aldrich Press.
I'm widely published in journals, both print and on-line, and my most recent collections are The Resonance Around Us and Recycling Starlight, both from Mountains and Rivers Press. My new collection A Prayer the Body Makes will be published summer 2020 by Kelsay Books / Aldrich Press.
The Oracle
The oracle wears the whiskered face
of an unknown animal, peers out at us
on autumn evenings, its eyes glowing
from tangles of weeds and roadside trash,
from the fringes of vacant city lots,
from patches of woods we’ve left untouched
to grace our lavish lawns.
Its teeth are sharp white warnings in the dark,
and may provoke the cries that startle us
awake from what we call our sleep.
The oracle predicts without speaking,
slaps its tail for emphasis, eludes our traps.
It knows we are bigger than it is,
has learned that we don’t care to heed
the messages it brings us from the deep.
Those who have chosen to stand watch
beside some unkempt border where it’s been
say they have seen the trail it leaves behind,
as it flattens the undergrowth on its way home.
And those who dare to follow its faint path,
claim they hear a keening in the grass,
a sorrow in the rustling leaves,
a cradle song that’s always just beyond
in the unrelenting night.
Previously published in The Night Marsh, 2008
No Enemy
There is no enemy among the roses
beside our sidewalk though their petals
shrivel brown like dried blood
in the slant winter sun.
And there is no enemy
in the black ice that hides
on our street after twilight rain.
Only the long sigh of the wind
tells us that night is coming
over the hills like a train
with no eyes, whistling faintly
from so far away
we can't tell if that stain
around it in the sky is smoke
or angels.
Previously published in Grandmother's Milk, 1995
Snowy Owl
The Snowy Owl is believed to be one of the oldest bird species
recognized in prehistoric cave art.
Snowy owl, you who can migrate
thousands of miles, do your white wings
bless us?
Those who dig deep in the dirt uncover
the skeleton of a dog, limbs bent in sleep,
eye sockets stuffed with centuries.
As a child in my bed at night, I listened
to neighborhood dogs, heard their barking
picked up by others farther and farther
away until it seemed I could faintly hear
all the way back to First Dog.
Snowy Owl, predator of the Arctic tundra,
what prey have you captured, what echoes
do you bring us from millennia of waste?
©2020 Penny Harter
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. -JL