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Jean L. Kreiling is a Professor of Music at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts and the author of two collections of poetry, both available at amazon.com: Arts & Letters & Love (2018) and The Truth in Dissonance (2014). She is a past winner of the Able Muse Write Prize, the Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters Sonnet Contest, the Kelsay Books Metrical Poetry Prize, a Laureates’ Prize in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, three New England Poetry Club prizes, and the String Poet Prize.
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Easter
Some years I made their dresses, sewing late
at night—lace collars, puffy sleeves, full skirts—
my stitches tiny, uniform, and straight,
as sturdy as my faith. What God deserts
a mother who hems three small dresses, buys
three ribboned hats, and documents this day
of resurrection—cruelest of lies—
with photos every year? Why did I pray
and make them sit respectfully in pews
to hear what turns out after all to be
a fairy tale? The good book’s glib good news
should not have been believed. Eternity
is only the duration of my hell;
my lost girls won’t rise with the Easter bell.
*****
Almost Summer
Soon the calloused soles of these old feet
will sigh as the accommodating grains
of sand embrace them, and my eyes will meet
their own blue in the sea. Soon what remains
of my cold-shriveled heart will feed on light
that paints the sky with salmon pink and lends
the air a Sunday radiance despite
my darkest sins. And soon the long walk ends,
no matter how well summer animates
my blood and limbs—the sand and sea and sky
still vital as the flesh disintegrates.
Though I have sturdy seasons left, they fly,
like layers of the shrinking storm-wracked dune
that I’ll walk by some summer morning, soon.
*****
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