Tag: Connie Soper

Three Poems by Connie Soper

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Cynthia’s Gift

Sometimes, when the grains of my own private grief
sift through me like sand,
or I am saddened again by the loss of her, I remember
how she gifted me this purple glass
for no reason at all.
It has no use, she said—
won’t hold flowers, can’t pour wine—
yet it pools a lavender essence, mellow
and dusky by the end of the day, color of creeping violets
on their way to summer.
It mirrors itself in the window,
veined with shades of a Murano sunset—
tender on the eyes, bathed in an amethyst wash.
She was luminous that way, bright as the lip of an orchid,
elegant in dress and demeanor.
A lilac-perfumed aura wafted in her wake,
until she slowly faded from herself
and no longer knew my face or name, forgetting, too
what she had given me.
Just something beautiful to look at, she said.
That’s all.

*

Threshold

When I ask where she wants me to leave
her earthly remains, she won’t say, as if

naming a place will take her there sooner.
My mother won’t speak of unpleasantries,

such as the inconvenience of dying.
She won’t talk of hymns, prayers, or the afterlife

she’s bound to enter. Yet here she is,
wearing the weathered skin of a century,

hovering in the purgatory of half-life,
one foot wedged into the other side.

I could shake her ashes onto the beach
where she’ll blend into beige, becoming

the landscape itself. I could recycle her
to nurture a tree, leaving a greener planet.

An urn on the mantle, a crypt, a proper chiseled stone.
It doesn’t matter where she’s left—

she’ll come back. Not in the resurrection
of tulip bulbs proving spring,

but in the stubborn roots of dandelions
I can never yank out.

In her handwriting scrawled on a recipe—
the pie crust only she could make.

I’ll see her face reflected in the mirror, my features
softening into hers.

I can take her to the threshold, karma-kissed and letting go.
Then it’s up to her.

*

Junk to Treasure

Nobody looks at old slides anymore,
those little squares rotating on a Kodak carousel—
Grand Canyon to nameless bridge to yet another monument.
Now boutique shops repurpose them
into found art—lamps with a retro glow,
vintage Christmas ornaments next to the bell-bottoms
in a secondhand store. Junk to treasure.

I take a box from the closet shelf,
hold a slide to the light. Delphi in December—
sky a blue flamboyance over Mt. Parnassus.
Such a tiny image for an enormous place.
I am stepping off the bus from Athens,
knapsack full of books, sweater and apples.
I wonder now who snapped this memory,
then handed the camera back. That’s his shadow,
a dark blotch on the sidewalk,
just before he disappeared into the vortex
of his own epiphany.

Whatever I saw, wherever I stood—
crumbling columns at the ancient temple,
taverna, plaza, dusty paths pocked
with goat hooves—I wanted nothing more
than to hold those moments close, like a face
memorized by touch, one you think will never change.
Here she is, that girl I had forgotten,
arriving all over again.
Ready to become something new.

*

Connie Soper is a poet living and writing in Portland, Oregon. She likes to visit small towns, hike, and walk along Oregon’s public beaches. Many of her poems are inspired by these experiences as well as other travels, and have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Catamaran, Cider Press Review, Sky Island Journal, ONE ART, and elsewhere. Her first full-length book of poetry, A Story Interrupted, was issued by Airlie Press in 2022.

Dried Flowers by Connie Soper

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Dried Flowers

My grandmother perfected the art of pressing flowers,
collecting them the way some people gather stamps

from countries they’ve never seen. There was Edelweiss
from Austria, Scottish bluebells, red poppies that blazed

the slopes of Corfu and Santorini. She ordered the rare
and exotic from catalogues, and when they arrived, wrapped

in tissue paper, she stuck them in encyclopedia pages next
to the places they came from. Cheek to jowl with images

of national monuments, presidents and kings.
After the blossoms were dried and flat and brittle,

she glued them onto velvet, arranged into shapes of gardens
and bouquets, boats sailing on a blue petalled sea.

Once, with nothing but a backpack and lust
for wander, I hiked Alpine meadows, the highlands and moors

where wildflowers perfumed an abundance next to the paths.
With the purity of youth, I left blossoms rooted, did not

want to pick them, not even for her. Now that I’m as old as she
when I was a child, I think of my grandmother

hunched over her kitchen table, surrounded by dried flowers,
peering through a magnifying glass to examine their fine markings,

the delicate whorls and patterns only nature could create.
She was happiest there, surrounded by flora from so many places.

She let the world come to her, with all its tiny blue flowers,
fiddlehead ferns, the soft-petalled pansies that grew in her own back yard.

*

Connie Soper’s poems have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Catamaran, Cider Press Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and elsewhere. She divides her time between Portland and Manzanita, Oregon. Her first full length book of poetry, A Story Interrupted, was published by Airlie Press in 2022. She is currently at work on her second collection.