Tag: gift

Three Poems by Connie Soper

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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.

The Gift of Analog Time by Carol Dorf

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The Gift of Analog Time

In the time of greater losses and lesser losses
I felt driven to possess an atomic clock –

my own machine to mark molecular motion
and to allow for time outside time.

If you put all the what-ifs in a giant trash bag
say the kind that’s filled with dried leaves

it still wouldn’t be big enough to hold
the alternatives to an ordinary life –

let alone one marked by an eclectic
approach to danger and greed.

Regret makes for a terrible soup
all dried herbs and nothing to wake up the broth

All I can think about now is sleep and my hope
to wake in another station of the multiverse.

*

Carol Dorf has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, Zoeglossia, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Their writing appears on the Poetry Foundation website, in several chapbooks, and in journals that include “Pleiades,” “About Place,” “Cutthroat,” “Five South,” and “Scientific American.” Founding poetry editor of Talking Writing, they taught math and writing in Berkeley USD, as well as at museums and conferences.

On Forgiveness by Andrea Potos

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ON FORGIVENESS

I’ve long been told
its chief benefit is a gift
to oneself most of all.

Suspicious of ease,
stingy as I am to give it,
forgive me when I say:

the clutching of my tight heart
has been talisman
warding off the hurt to come.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Two Emilys (Kelsay Books) and Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press). A new collection entitled The Presence of One Word is forthcoming later in 2025. Recent poems can be found in CALYX Journal, Presence, New York Times Book Review, Earth’s Daughters, and Poem. You can find her at andreapotos.com

Gift by Donna Hilbert

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Gift

O magnolia bloom

floating in a shallow bowl
adorning my window sill

glowing golden now
luminous in waning

a beauty
still

*

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella from Moon Tide Press, following Threnody, Moon Tide, 2022. A second edition of Gravity: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming from Moon Tide in early 2025.Work has appeared in numerous journals and broadcasts including Cultural Daily, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Vox Populi, The Writer’s Almanac, Lyric Life, and anthologies including The Poetry of Presence volumes I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing. www.donnahilbert.com

Two Poems by Barbara Eknoian

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Gift

He sits on the edge
of the couch
hoping his niece
will like the gift
purchased
at the thrift store.
She smiles,
makes a fuss
over the watercolors
in tarnished frames,
showing houses
on a street strewn
with orange leaves.
At the bottom
of the Christmas tree,
she props the prints up
to rest against gifts
bought with Visa
and Mastercard,
and the lovely shades
of autumn outshine
the tinsel and lights.

*

Sentimental

In a lucid moment,
I wonder why I keep
the black steamer trunk
in the corner of my room
crammed with letters
from girl scout camp
and high school friends,
who have forgotten me
like an old sneaker
hanging from a wire,
along with every letter
from former neighbors,
who meant a lot to me.
I revere the correspondence
as though they’re prayers,
but realize I’m too sentimental
valuing the friendships
for more than what they were.
I contemplate a huge bonfire
and see the letters burning up,
yet I need to hold on to them
like artifacts in a museum
to prove that I was here,
and we were once.

*

Barbara Eknoian’s work has appeared in Pearl, Chiron Review, Cadence Collective, Redshift, and Silver Birch Press’s anthologies. Her recent collection of short stories published by Amazon is Romance is Not Too Far From Here. She lives in La Mirada, CA with daughter, grandson, one cat and a kitten. The kitten is full of mischief and keeps the whole family on their toes.

The Grapefruit by Bethany Reid

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The Grapefruit

In Matisse’s Violinist at the Window,
shades of ochre and orange
make me think of the grapefruit
my husband bought yesterday
at the market, and of the grapefruit spoon,
a Valentine’s Day gift,
that I used this morning at breakfast.
The song the violinist plays
is Chopin, a prelude, or a nocturne,
notes lifting from his bow
both sweet and tart.

*

Bethany Reid’s poetry books include Sparrow, which won the 2012 Gell Poetry Prize (Big Pencil Press 2012), and The Thing with Feathers, which was published as part of Triple No. 10 (Ravenna Press 2020). She and her husband live in Edmonds, Washington, near their three grown daughters. She blogs at http://www.bethanyareid.com.