2 Poems by Marina Romani

Seasons Quartet 
     •
ice glitters on bare branches
radiance startles  blinds
dazzle of insight
     •
cherry blossoms in spring rain
a young girl’s tears
sorrow washed in promise
     •
fields of undulate grasses
stillness vast timeless
silence of women
     •
fog ribbons mid green hills
sun-flung gold  light-shadow shimmy
city-lit spires syncopate


Springing to Autumn

In the orchards
apple blossoms
bloomed a moment,
spring rain flowed
into summer heat,
buzz of flies,
songs of birds,
games, calls of children.

Then
summer swelled,
passed to memory,
flies down,
birds flown,
games ended,
children scattered.

Now
summer songs,
distant cries, calls
linger in gardens,
echo in kitchens
as children sit,
clean and still,
in bright classrooms
and leafy green trees
speckle red apples.

Ripeness surrounds.


Biononte

Marina Romani spent her early childhood in wartime and civil-war China. Then, after several months in a refugee camp on a remote island in the Philippines followed by a year in urban Australia, she arrived in small-town California just in time to enter adolescence—as a small outsider in a world then ruled by conformity, she survived the transition with only minor damage. Marina’s adult years have been more conventionally adventurous. Now retired from a couple of marriages and as many careers, she is happily settled in Monterey, where taking oceanside walks and writing poems are two of her greatest pleasures. Marina’s recent work has appeared in Homestead Review, Porter Gulch Review, Monterey Poetry Review, and the Tor House Newsletter. Since 2008, her poems have twice been finalists in the Central Coast Writers’ annual writing contest. She is currently completing a poem and prose memoir about her unusual childhood.