October 2023
Bio Note: It seems the older I get the more I savor family and friend stories. I have been a traveling wild woman this past year and have been listening to so many stories-remembering them in poetry makes me very happy. Once Upon a Tar Creek Mining for Voices (Turning Plow Press) came out in 2021 and is also full of stories. Broken Blossoms (Fernwood Press) is forthcoming.
Let It Rain
on a quite miserable Portland day
my uncle tells me
“real Portlanders don’t use umbrellas”
then walks me across St John’s Bridge
where trucks spray wet fumes
and clouds dump their teary load
as the Willamette
travels north
Herb is old now
savvy to rain’s many faces
tumor’s relentless reach
(think Zodiac
think cancer
think crab)
still he keeps on
because water is life
and he knows to look at this storm
straight in the eye
take a step
then the next
wherever it takes him
Two Days Before Taking Flight
My mother lies in her sick bed
we watch Public Television
a special on war-time pigeon heroics
how they carried messages
saving how many lives
in their high sky journeys
Does she feel her own muscles
preparing to leave—a letting loose
of what keeps her tethered here?
Maybe the pigeons give her hope
a sort of knowledge
we all need
when it’s time to fly
Clapper Light
in the last months
of his 100th year
my father learned to clap
a lamp to light
and each time a sigh of awe
he always knew the joy
of simple pleasures
enough to make each day
worth savoring
sunrise to sunset to sunrise
©2023 Maryann Hurtt
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