April 2023
Bio Note: Retirement in Oregon has done well by me; I have more time to dedicate to writing but less energy. After fruitless decades of submitting to contests, my first book will be published by a local press with the gentlest editor at Fernwood Press. Volunteer work in the past included WriteGirl in southern California and literacy programs; I currently lead a group of poetry readers at the Senior Studies Institute in Portland and participate in the Ars Poetica community. Most recently my work has been published in Aji, Cirque, and Fireweed.
Suitcase in Hand
Comes a time to walk away from what you made,
Let the thing continue to vibrate without you.
Gears turn, jewels sparkle without you,
Words stand on the page where you left them.
After you’re gone, no one waits for you
To take a bow or searches for your signature
On the watch, the quilt, the crown, the vase.
The carved, sanded, and painted rocking horse
Will quiver, anticipating motion, his nostrils
Flare. He will not hold still in time and space.
Neither do time and space. They continue
To expand and contract, their creator long gone.
Transmigration
She craves pyramids but cannot say,
Once I dreamed I died in Egypt.
She longs to walk along the Nile.
She keeps silent this knowledge:
I died with the bray of a camel in my ears,
After years of hearing them do nothing
But grumble through my hours of sleep.
I would return there when the world
Dissolves into chaos, then wrap
Myself in a camel hair shroud,
All the shields and arrows at rest.
She plans her trip for the summer solstice
When the sun keeps all shadows short,
Temperatures high, among the pyramids.
She dreams instead of Alexandria on the sea.
I am the instrument of destruction,
Unable to resist pushing the water
And fanning the wind, intent on making
Way for new worlds. Place the ankh on my lips.
Third Eye Questions
Will both eyes still be blue? I ask,
Hoping to raise a laugh. A bomb,
Not fit for a stand-up routine.
What I meant was—
My heart would break if I
Could not see your eyes,
My soul fibrillate if I could
Not see my eyes through yours.
Half my world obscured,
Restored by a tilt of the head,
My depth perception missing,
A quick turn is as good as a fall.
You sit and read somewhere in
This vast acreage of a hospital.
In the operating room, I ask,
Who gets to choose the music?
You do. The answer fills me.
We change muted rock and roll
To jazz. And midway through
A riff of horns lifts me. I’m in love.
I’m wrapped up like a chrysalis,
The team talks in non sequiturs.
Green gel extracted from the vitreous
Body. I cannot feel the eye exposed.
©2023 Trina Gaynon
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL