May 2020
Bio Note: For the last eleven years, I've lived in the South Jersey shore area,
about a half-hour drive in from the Atlantic Ocean. For those of us who write, we know that
the work keeps us going through our sorrows and gives us voice to celebrate our joys, even
in the darker times. We must cherish and love one another and this world, such as it is,
since there is always beauty to be found, whether in nature or the human heart! And though
I've now been writing and publishing poems for fifty years, and have been blessed with a number
of published books, I celebrate each sharing in print and look forward to my new book
A Prayer the Body Makes due out in a month or so from Kelsay Books.
The Gravity of the Sacred
Visible and invisible,
it tethers us, wraps our limbs
in radiant linen.
It beats in our chests,
flares out to bless whatever
gets in its way.
I have seen it leap across a field
riding the wind from blade to blade
until the grass grows dim again
and lost.
Feel it knocking at your throat,
wanting to speak in tongues
about the light that even now
is flaming in your flesh
for a little while.
(Originally appeared in Buried in the Sky)
White Water
Fragments of the sun
between dark banks, faces
flicker in the white water
of the shallows,
mutable foam over rocks.
There a gray beard
like smoke in the current
surges as it falls,
and in the vaulting light,
blown like milky breath
from the corners of
a newborn's mouth,
a stream of bubbles
echoes an ancient tongue.
(Originally appeared in Lizard Light: Poems from the Earth)
©2020 Penny Harter
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It is very important. -JL