Today a smoky haze hangs
over the trees drapes the fields
Wildfires from Canada
dropping down on the wind
and I think again of Maui
Lahaina where ash sifts on the wind
tiny bones gone to ground
so that the whole is a cemetery
of the unknowns still searched for
how to ever build again to walk
this ground where souls have vanished
to heal the gaping wounds gone black
with despair even as sun rises
and ground cools
believe then in spirits circling
in voices lifting just a breeze away
absent arms hugging and small hands
tugging fingertips: this is the only way
to move your feet and step
on what will always be
hallowed ground.
Pat Anthony, frequently uses the land as a lens as she mines characters, relationships and herself. She finds poetry both release and compulsion as she contends with the challenges of bipolar disorder. A recently retired educator, she poems daily, edits furiously and scrabbles for honesty no matter the cost. Her poetry celebrates survival and draws upon not only personal experience but the larger metaphors of the natural world. Chapbooks include Middlecreek: Currents and Undercurrents, Orchard Street Press, and Between Two Cities on a Greyhound Bus, by Cholla Needles, (Amazon). She has work published and forthcoming in multiple journals.
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