3 Poems by Julene Tripp Weaver

Final Resting Place

He reached his peak of happiness
he said, when he bought the acreage
on the road that curved. Done with
a squared off block, he preferred
the ambiguity of the turn
one could not see around, an edge
that would simmer unpredictable,
create distance from the sharp-sheared
corner hedges. He planted tall grasses
that boosted white praying hands
reaching to the sky. Finally, a place
quiet to rest under the tall cedar
perched to hide pavement, with soft
brown needles for under his feet
to silence his world.


Saving Each Other

Earthworms stranded on sidewalks
drowned out of their earth-home
they move slow wanting to return, inch-by-
inch against gravel nowhere to begin
the long climb down. What earthling
comes to their rescue with a stick?
Sweet beings who inhabit this northwest
each person like an earthworm
inching our way home.


Invisible World

“...with every invention comes a spiritual debt that must be paid, either ritually, or else taken out of us in warfare, grief, or depression.” Martin Prechtel, The Sun

At work, I bring up the invisible world
people stare with blank faces

I say how cups in the grass bother me
someone interprets, “the trash”

I forget to talk about the malls that cover streams
and how there is never enough we can give back for all our construction

our beauty is miles from the beauty we lost
I stand witness to the invisible world and its slow dissolving

I want to stop the movement of industrial men through time
I want to pour sense into them, write poetry that will slow them into silence

want to stop them from building walls so close together
that a seagull becomes trapped, can’t spread her wings

this seagull is our invisible world
she cries out for assistance, we walk past

I am as invisible as the seagulls that live at the beach
hungry, voracious for a world that no longer exists

Previously published in Off  the Coast, January 2006, Vol. XII No. 1


Bionote

Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, WA. She has a chapbook and two full size collections. The latest, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, published by Finishing Line Press, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and won the Bisexual Book Award. Her work is online at The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now, Voices in the Wind, Antinarrative Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Writing in a Woman's Voice, you can find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.