2 poems
Map
In this world a hand
is skin stretched over bone
& strings over the rib cage of a cello
play a melody––wing & air
Water is a song. Rivers are rivers
& the cambia of trees.
Veins of various animals run
toward dissolution & birth.
Fish are fish & mammals
that once grew legs but wandered
back to water. That is a whale.
A whale is whole world.
But most of this world
is made of space. Here
is what you cannot see
neither light nor dark & both
touch them, as soft as nothing
but give. That is to yield
to a world where the heart
is an idea as much as a muscle
& various birds in flight. & sometimes
a doe—very still & looking.
That is quiet. Have you heard
namelessness harmonize with wind?
That is a self. In this world
it comes & goes as bells sounding
time & place are very near
& very far away.
ode to penelope
& after rain
an archipelago
of cloud light
& shadow forever
conspire in grass
a breeze moves—
cool, tender
earth & moss renewed
by water bloom
in cracks of pavement
hills grow
green epochs
over ancient rock
epics harden
possibility holds
still as a woman
in her house
weaves sky
all day
I see her
ocean her
warp & weft
moon’s changeling
shape as she
unweaves
a world
opens
Twila Newey holds an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University. She lives and works at the confluence of poetry, visual art, local ecology, motherhood, and the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in Northern California. You can find recent work at Green Mountains Review, About Place Journal, and Radar Poetry.