2 Poems by Dianna Mackinnon Henning

Come Late July

I thought I saw a wolf in the bramble bush,
its tongue slavered with hope,
ears pitched to perfect triangles,
this supposed wolf, sentinel of the wild,
a howling-winds-wolf,
not once looked back at me
and I, the only seeing one
didn’t need our eyes locked
and because we had not touched by sight
my bramble bush, my silvered wolf
became my heart’s centerpiece

and there, and there he stayed
and stayed

For the Dancing Birds

Little Monk, I call my desk, as I caress its shiny surface.

It happily groans. We have worked like this
for many years. What it likes best
is a certain quiet that rises,

how thoughts become dancing birds,
and the writer at the desk,
an open sky.

Bionote

Dianna taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several California Arts Council grants and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program. Publications, in part: The Tule Review; California Quarterly; That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Poetry & prose by artists teaching in carceral institutions, New Village Press, 2023. Mocking Heart Review; Poet News; Voices; That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Poetry & prose by artists teaching in carceral institutions, New Village Press, 2023; Poet News; Voices; Red Rock Review; MacQueen’s Quinterly; Artemis Journal, 2021, 2022, 2023; The Adirondack Review; Memoir Magazine; The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester; Pacific Poetry and New American Writing. 2021 Nomination by The Adirondack Review for a Pushcart Prize. MFA in Writing ’89, Vermont College. Fourth book “Camaraderie of the Marvelous.”