Poetry

by Susan McAtee Monday

by

Comfort rises

As with mulled wine in a cold stairwell Comfort rises like steam from our attachments Pocket bears, silver snowflakes, paper elephants glass beads and tiny boxes of pen nibs Human hearts find tokens and milagros to take us where we need to be. The potent weight of sorrow appears in what we have shoved to the backs of drawers and along undusted shelves.

Another season

Most summers a green strip lives along both sides of the road This year the green is all the way to the sky all the way to the middle of July.

(Please note: the green is not coming anymore, it is going. As daylight shortens at both ends.) Inspired (somehow) by the lines from the Talmud that read: Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”

I used to be invisible but I am now aiming for golden yellow Meanwhile The wiry enclosure around me keeps the beasts at bay barbed with comments I never used to say out loud. My actual nature is sloth No one notices because I move so fast. I tried purple, but I didn’t like its portent, so I am turning khaki and pieces of me are falling off like dead leaves. I want to be an ocean but today I was only a drip in the tub Tomorrow I may be up to creek running across limestone with a clear gurgle Spotted with red and black salamanders and shadowed with the spindly legs of those who walk on water I’m like October in South Texas Not crisp enough just yet, but wetter And better than August.

Found Poem

What does it mean when you wake up one morning and this is what your computer screen says:

You areUnable to establish a secure connectionThere is a problem with security at that site.(the identity certificate has expired.)

-Susan McAtee Monday

Susan McAtee Monday is a native of Houston, who grew up in Waco. She has lived in San Antonio since graduating from Trinity University in 1970. She has worked in creative education, journalism, and museum and exhibit design, among other eclectic enterprises. Currently she is ?making art from old tablecloths and writing poetry in much the same way: starting with memory, building up layers, aiming to stitch a straight seam.

–Naomi Shihab Nye