A Malady of Moving Parts
.
Most things may seem crucial now
in ways they didn’t always.
It’s age–that makes it so. After a while,
you may begin to see life as a skin
condition which salves and lotions
do not heal. Or what else? A malady
of your moving parts? Maybe the streets
where you ran your personal races now
seem inaccessible, pregnant with twilight
and trepidation. Perhaps just being here
is no longer sufficient; you need meaning,
bursts of light, places that never change.
You feel a need to focus on your city’s
palm trees raising their leonine heads
to drink from the clouds; you need to
rejoice in that sight. The sacred matins
are still there to be read, but who will
celebrate them? You hope it will be you,
so you practice gratitude, open-ended prayers,
fasting, gormandizing, and poems
concerned with language on a very plain level.¹
As permanence and afterthoughts may
no longer equal salvation, these are my wishes for you:
Neap tides,
blood moons
and the strong gods of wherever you might be from;
may they keep you safe and happy.
These are my wishes for you.
They are golden eggs, waiting to hatch.
¹from John Ashberry’s Paradoxes and Oxymorons, 1981
.
For My Friend Who Doesn’t Want Poems Written For Her
.
When we met, something traveled
the length of my bones, whispered,
“Here is a woman bound for places
and come from places
you will never understand.”
And so you were—
the nearly. suspicious quiet
of you and the way light
would turn to fireworks in your hair
at certain times of day—
I thought I could never
understand those things nor
ever wrap a poem around them.
You wrote and you sang and you spoke
and it was clear that the voices
of animals and angels lived in, thrived,
ventured out of your best self.
I have never felt older than
when we met; the sweetness
of your face stung me.
You housed a profound innocence
that surprised my skin like sleet.
I have wanted, since then, to be
your real sister, to make a blood
pact with you, or break glass together,
or look for portents
from your deck in Charlotte.
I know I have failed you
on at least one awful occasion,
but hear this single prayer:
never doubt the truth of our meeting.
Your star will always travel and live
in the length of my bones.
BIO: Martina Reisz Newberry has been writing poetry for 50+ years. Her most recent book is GLYPHS (Deerbrook Editions, March 2022). Others are BLUES FOR FRENCH ROAST WITH CHICORY (Deerbrook Editions, 2020), NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE (Deerbrook Editions, 2017), WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions, 2014), LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions, 2012), and RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE (Red Hen Press, 2005). She currently lives in Hollywood, CA with her husband, Brian, a Media Creative.
