Two Poems by Laura Ann Reed

The Unfolding

— For Emir Alajbegovic̈

With only the ocean
And a mere stretch of continent

To divide us, this brief eyelessness
Of time

The seven roses of your voice
Once more open in the vase

And on the mantelpiece the menorah
No longer candleless.

*

And Now, Your Silence

canted at an angle to the archives of our past.
         Like the wall in old Jerusalem
that leans against an air so dense
         with the white, six-sided particulate
of human woe that one can’t tell
         where the stone begins, where
the salt-stiffened fingers end. And no way
         of knowing which holds
the other up. The seven roses
         bend and darken on their stems.

*

Laura Ann Reed, a San Francisco Bay Area native whose work has been published in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA, taught dance at the University of California prior to her role as Leadership Development trainer at the Environmental Protection Agency. Now retired, she lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest. Her poems have been included in seven anthologies. Shadows Thrown, her debut chapbook, was published in February, 2023. lauraannreed.net