The Paddock Review

Letter to an Old Friend

 

Late afternoons

…..the light tricks out the hidden fruit in trees,

……….like dreams dangling from the plank of day.

 

​Bent over the page,

…..I trace my life for your sake

 ……….the laundry, the orange cakes, the first stars of evening.

 

In calligraphy, the rules require

…..a perfect tilt to the nib,

……….the conscious arc of every “o.”

 

But my imperfect script

…..hews more to rules of love,

……….frank and faintly angular,

 

The condensation of solitude

…..ripens like plums 

……….before the dinner hour plucks it away.

 

Time slows, a phrase tumbles to the page,

…..vivid and involuntary as love’s colors,

……….as our last farewell.

 

My heart spills

…..naked, a startling stain 

……….on an ordinary day. 

 

Obscured from all 

…..my laden hours, I run, 

……….at last corporeal.

….

This poem is from the book Mending Prayer Rugs by Kathleen Hirsch (Finishing Line Press) and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/mending-prayer-rugs-by-kathleen-hirsch/

Mending Prayer Rugs is a meditation on the hidden ways in which women suffuse the life around them with their spiritual force – their creativity, passion for justice, and enduring devotion.  Our poetry is kindled in the writing of a letter or the search for a songbird.  In the lover saying farewell, and the act of folding laundry.  Prayer can bring the distant child as close as a garden bench.  Stitching in a refugee camp or lighting the fire on a well-worn hearth can illuminate the hidden beauty of humble tending.  Women arrive here as artists, prophets, and ancestors, in pivotal moments in which memory and resilience strive to heal the history of war and exile.  In a time when the “feminine” is often suffocated by the clamor of aggression, these poems offer witness, sanctuary, and a vision of regeneration.