I Can Count on Wings

Welcome, April, and welcome back, Friends!

This evening I’m pleased to share a public poetry post featuring a brand-new poem I composed tonite in the pantoum style, a Malaysian form that has found its way into my heart over the last year or so, having first been introduced to it via Pádraig Ó Tuama’s wonderful Substack, Poetry Unbound. If you haven’t yet, feel free to go back in the archives and explore my past attempts at pantoum poetry on Substack here, here, and here.

Specifically, today’s pantoum was inspired by his prompt exploring the sensory experience of the place you call home, however you interpret that. If you are curious to try out a pantoum yourself, I can’t say enough about how supportive the form feels. Pádraig Ó Tuama provides prompts for each line, and suggestions for the order of the lines. It’s as close as it gets to poetry’s version of paint by number. If you try it out, let me know!

I also want to let you know that I’ll be taking the rest of April as a short sabbatical from Substack, but hope that you will hang in there with me until I return during the first week of May. I adore having this space in which to write regularly and connect with you all, and I find that taking a bit of time away a couple of times a year helps me to stay rested and deeply connected to my creative practice. Thank you, as always, for your support an understanding.

While I’m away, here’s a few of my favorite past posts that you might enjoy if you missed them the first time around:

• A virtual tour of the Little Women garden and a reading of Mary Oliver’s “Invitation”

• My Mary Shelley inspired poem

• A love letter to Boston, along with my Granary Burying Ground inspired poem

• Encounters with Enchantment (reflections on a visit to Emily Dickinson’s home)

I am so grateful for the support of each one of you (and the continued messages about my latest poetry collection!), and look forward to seeing you in this space the first week of May. As always, I hope you read something you love.

Untitled April Pantoum

*

I left the city this summer, reluctantly, and yet –

the trees and fields and farms have grown on me,

as I once (long ago) grew from them.

*

I hear the sound of crickets

when I walk bedtime streets these nights,

having traded in the trembling of the trains

in the white-hot heat of June.

*

The sound of, well - not silence,

but of being held in the dark, by the dark, fills my ears.

*

Street lights, foggy sentinels who light the night

and still let the stars be seen as I stand under a spring sky,

fingers curled within my mittens,

searching for a glimpse of the Pink Moon.

*

*

I hear the sound of crickets

when I walk the quiet streets these nights,

having traded in the trembling of the trains

in the white-hot heat of June.

*

Neighbors walk labyrinths around the block

making manifest moving prayers.

What is it, if not holy, to open your heart to human beings,

soft and seeking, all?

*

Street lights, foggy sentinels who light the night

and still let the stars be seen as I stand under a spring sky,

hands clasped over my heart,

seeking a glimpse of the Pink Moon.

*

Time has flown like the starling

and keeps returning like the geese,

back from their southerly safe havens –

it bends –

but does not break, as I feared it would

all those nights

before flying off myself and learning that the sky is mine.

*

*

I hear the sound of crickets

when I walk the bedtime streets these nights,

having traded in the trembling of the trains

in the white-hot heat of June.

*

Once in a fortnight, my eyes search the ceiling

for clues of where I find myself:

which city

which space

which version of striving and savoring am I

slumbering in?

*

Time has flown like the starling

and keeps returning like the geese,

back from their southerly safe havens –

it bends –

doesn’t break, as I feared it would

all those nights

before flying off myself and learning that I can count on wings.

*

When the dawn yawns and the magnolias begin to stir,

I marvel at how much the heart can stretch:

to take in

to make

and to be the conduit

of this much love.

*

*

Once in a fortnight, my eyes search the ceiling

for clues of where I find myself:

which city

which space

which version of striving and savoring am I

slumbering in?

*

The sound of, well, not silence,

but of being held in the dark fills my ears.

*

When the dawn yawns and the magnolias begin to stir,

I marvel at how much the heart can stretch:

to take in

to make

and to be the conduit

of this much

Love.

*

I left the city this summer, reluctantly, and yet –

the trees and fields and farms have grown on me,

as I once (long ago) grew from them.