Poetry Monday: Penny Harter
POETRY MONDAY
Penny Harter
I think you will like these quiet, reflective poems by Penny Harter. The first two are from her collection Buried in the Sky (La Alameda Press, Albuqueque, NM, 2001). The third, “Last Night I Woke Crying,” appears for the first time here.
Penny Harter’s other collections include Night Marsh and Lizard Light: Poems from the Earth, as well as an illustrated “alphabestiary” for children, The Beastie Book, just released by Shenanigan Books. A teaching poet for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, she has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Her awards and fellowships include three from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Mary Carolyn Davies Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the William O. Douglas
Nature Writing Award.
Ms. Harter lives in the southern New Jersey shore area.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
At Ninety, My Father
At ninety, my father studies the cosmos,
slowly turning pages in his birthday book
to contemplate the glowing photographs
of planets, of galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
He is looking into time.
With his good eye, he reads about
the rings of Saturn, the seas of Mars,
enters giant towers birthing stars.
Here and there, he leaves a fingerprint
among the spirals
in the radiant dark.
Buried in the Sky (La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, NM, 2001).
The Door in the Sun
As if there were a door in the sun.
As if somehow that door opened
into a dark heart, its hydrogen frame
blinding those who enter.
As if we would not burn,
would not return to brilliant gas
and dust if we went through,
leaving the blaze behind
like a story we once knew,
its aura still flickering
at the edges of our flesh,
a story we’ve been feeding
all our lives.
As if we could enter
the still point, the pause
between heartbeats,
the incandescent darkness
where the blood waits
and then goes on.
Buried in the Sky (La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, NM, 2001).
Last Night I Woke Crying
Last night I woke crying,
and in this morning’s mirror
my eyes chart faint tributaries
where salt visited.
I was dreaming of the sea—and of you
treading water out beyond the breakers.
Sorrow for you, but joy for me, you called,
smiling and waving, as I worked to ride
wave after wave into shore.
Grief finds me often, these nights
since your death—spilling from me
like a spring tide unrelated to the pull
of moon and sun.
In sleep, I roam some intertidal zone,
the night wind blowing sand into my eyes,
and tears fill the dry gullies
I have been deepening for years.
