I rhyme // To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
…….from Personal Helicon, Seamus Heaney
….
I stare down well shafts too, Seamus
and into deep night skies
through the rising breadth of ever-rolling waves,
into the intricacies of leaf-life.
…..
Seeking the shining word-Muse
of my damning craft who rises
hazy, like mirage on a July tarred road.
And, when glimpsed,
her image is made of mirror.
….
The formula is always the same
the results, miraculously, vary.
Like all dust and sinew of this life
all parts of me careen away from center.
I feel the slow, slack response creeping through my bones,
time tramples crudely across my face,
….
The words we share alone
are stone-bound
and record this flashing moment.
………
……….
This poem is from the chapbook Beyond the Noisy Membrane, Poems by Mary Imo-Stike (Finishing Line Press), and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/beyond-the-noisy-membrane-poems-by-mary-imo-stike/
The poems of Beyond the Noisy Membrane identify and celebrate the connections between what’s on the everyday roadways we travel and in the vast worlds that encompass us. They embrace the complex simplicity of the natural world juxtaposed with our human desire for understanding our place in it. They strive to extract and reveal stories from the life-ground we walk on, from the sight of a single kernel of yellow corn or the full moon, expansive in a winter night sky.
Mary Imo-Stike was born and raised in Rochester, New York. She worked non-traditional jobs as a railroad track laborer, a plumber, boiler operator and gas line inspector. Mary received her MFA from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 2015 and served as the poetry co-editor of HeartWood literary journal. She was the co-creator of More Than Words* a monthly community literary event in Hurricane, West Virgina. Mary’s poems have been published in many journals, one nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her chapbook In and Out of the Horse Latitudes was published in 2018 by Finishing Line Press. A longtime resident of West Virginia, she now lives with her husband in Punta Gorda, Florida.
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