2 Poems by Susan Dale

Was

Was    listening to hear the grace
That one morning     was
Left, the empty shoes
of a traveler’s journey
If I went there
Everywhere, I    was
And nowhere   was
Far enough
Was     in the act of creation
Me,      into myself
Thinking nothing,
Or anything else mattered
To me
Or me to them


Home

A terrain of time and place
Home – a quiet place
I repeat to find in my mind

Past and present traveling string-straight lines
Before they spiral, one to the other to rise
 to higher elevations
of  twilight faces – secret voices at dawn

But never losing contact with the soil of my roots

A wildflower under shadows wide of woodland trees
Taking root from a seed carried by an autumn storm
Through dark tunnels and out
To a quiet forest
Pulsing upwards from the soul’s blood in spring
Tasting winds – hearing the stars’ chatter
A tangle of blood and genealogy
This soil of linkage to Ohio’s ever-changing seasons

Remembering and forgetting
Remembering again
To resurrect in rain-drenched whispers with the songs of ascension
Upwards to spread
Reaching out to find
To touch again
The ever-elusive phantom
Of home


Bionote

Susan Dale’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Ken *Again, Hackwriters, Yesteryear Fiction, Feathered Flounder, and Hurricane Press. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. (Susan_stcy@yahoo.com  or dalesu111@aol.com)