Jeanne Murray Walker is the award-winning author of 10 volumes of poetry, including her most recent, Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking. She lives in Merion Station, Pa.
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Going to Prison in an Age of Corrupt Politics
Illustration by Shin Yeon Moon
Some mornings I drive to the duck pond
instead of writing poems. I can’t remember
how to keep words coupled to the truth.
So much lying has torn words loose
from what they stood for. Remember,
back when we agreed on their meanings?
I’d say honey for instance, and you could
taste it. Once you said freedom
and I saw doves rising from your shoulders.
We shared language so we were not alone.
We both loved words as if we could see them:
like ducks bobbing on a pond, dipping,
scooping, swabbing insects from the air.
Breaking the Blue Bowl
I am the tiny, irate, scolding person
standing in the dome of my own skull.
She shakes her head again, arms crossed, again
disappointed: I’m clumsy, struggling, dull.
Then there’s the shattered wine glass,
an afternoon misspent, a dinner gobbled,
rank laundry, unpaid bills, uncut grass,
and, I suspect, one lovely friendship bobbled.
And yet, I’m here. Alive.
Jesus and the Cabbage
His friend Martha's making soup, because you still /
have to eat. Meanwhile, back in the Garden /