October 2023
Bio Note: I’m a poet, musician, broadcaster, and cultural journalist in Columbus, Ohio, and am grateful to have this chance to share my work with the Verse-Virtual community. I’ve been featured in American Life in Poetry (at the invitation of Ted Kooser), and my work appears in my collections In the High Weeds (NFSPS Press), winner of the Stevens Prize of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, and Joyride (Red Moon Press), winner of the Marianne Bluger Book Award, as well as in The Columbia Review and in many other literary journals.
Jennifer Hambrick
I will arise and go now
– William Butler Yeats
Mist rises on the lake
five geese take flight
into the breath of day
expansive as a clearing
in the soul’s cool glade –
Now is the time to leave
and wander
to bow to the mountain
and breathe the wisdom
of saints and sages
to savor the sweet lantern light
of the pear tree
to shadow the river’s bending
banks and bathe in the petals
of the weeping cherry
and when dusk lays itself
on a cradle of lamb’s ear
follow the map of stars
into the welcoming darkness
that sighs for you
embraces you
with low lulling sounds
and wraps you
in the never-ending shore
of your tomorrows
Originally published in Old Red Kimono.
©2023 Jennifer Hambrick