blue skies poetry

Wind …
your voice keening across the prairie
comes to me in foreign languages,
a whisper in the aspen thicket,
or heavily accented with evergreen,
your breath smelling of spruce gum
and camphor.

At first
I did not like you, did not trust
your movements as you stirred, or the clanging
as you rattled the bars of the branched cages
where you lived and moved in your malign being.
I feared the dirges I heard at night,
moaning all the parts of a dead day’s requiem,
spilling lamentation into the unfriendly darkness.
Even the owl, so wise and silent,
fled your mournful urgency, swooping
low and shadowy, moonlight-chased, across
the open spaces of our yard.

No matter where I went, you followed, shook free
of every bowery prison, made fugitive haste to stay
proximate, arcing high over tumbled terrain,
skimming the plateau of flat country. Stalking me.

Or so I thought.
And yet—in this expansive, lonely land
you changed your speech, put threats away, rippled
through ripening fields, beguiled me
with a resonant song, an undertone
of symphonic excitement felt in my veins.

How could I not respond?
I open to you, take you deep within,
become breath of your breath.

~ Deborah Lawson

Deborah Lawson, a freelance editor and published non-fiction writer, has been a private poet since high school days. Four years ago she “went public” in Edmonton’s charismatic and supportive poetry community, where the energy that comes from hanging out with other writers invigorates her own creative development. She enjoys experimenting with a variety of poetic forms. Poetry deepens her ability to engage with and pay attention to life, and allows her to be “at home” in a world where her affinity for words, metaphor and meaning is welcomed rather than considered peculiar. In 2007, one of Deborah’s poems was chosen as Poetry Winner in the Other Voices 20th Anniversary Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry Contest.

Filed under: Deborah Lawson, Writing the Land by akublik Date 2 September, 2007