Broadside #33 (Winter 2014 / 14.2)
Susan Terris
Palm of Wind
Speared like a kite in
a tree, see through leaves.
Don’t hold, let be. A
heart may spar, stop, lose
thrum if the hum
is too hard. So be a toy,
a ploy, a slim slice of day
to slink and slip
its way past owl and
skunk and howl,
a string to sing and be
close and let loose all
rite-wrong-songs.
Just the palm held up
to silk of sky and stun
of sun, and beat, the
beat soft-fleet uncaught
rhyme of wind and
chime of time
~
Author’s commentary: This poem was created in a tiny one room cabin in Maine where I go each year for a week of solitude and writing. This poem was a gift. Sometimes, when a person has time set aside to do nothing but write, words flow and arrange themselves on a page in a way the conscious mind can’t account for them. There were trees and owls and skunks around the cabin, but no kite. The poem that shaped itself is a meditation on a complex relationship. While I was working on “Palm of Wind,” rhyme and the lyric nature of an unfamiliar voice possessed me. I was not myself; yet whoever I’d become I could not control her either.