Tag: Jenna Wysong Filbrun

As I Contemplate Precarity, the Dogs Eat Their Breakfast by Jenna Wysong Filbrun

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As I Contemplate Precarity, the Dogs Eat Their Breakfast

I would forget,
if it weren’t for the crunch
of kibble over the quiet
light as it awakens
from gray
to white,
how to keep on.

Each moment
is an invitation
extended for an instant—
the hunger of life
for itself, the heart
of souls resting
in my care.

Why can’t I be tender with myself?
Life moves through me,
asking me in,
opening the present
like a window.
If I can accept, fresh air
flows like breath.

I want to keep
my loves forever
just like this,
and I hope like hunger
the moment,
as it passes,
will never be gone.

*

Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Running Toward Water, forthcoming from Shanti Arts in 2026. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and have appeared in Deep Wild Journal, Gyroscope Review, Wild Roof Journal, and other publications. She practices poetry to deepen her awareness of connection and loves to spend time at home and in the wild with her husband, Mike, and their dogs, Oliver and Lewis. Find her on Instagram @jwfilbrun.

Two Poems by Jenna Wysong Filbrun

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Illness

When a windstorm
blasts in from the north
with a sudden
and desperate rage,
even the cottonwoods bow
to the white sheets of rain.

Behind the single
silver-green leaf
plastered to the glass
of the patio door, you can see
the awful flailing
of the trees flying apart
like someone drowning.

When all you can do
is keep your heart
close to the hurt,
you keep it close.

*

Like It Was

Yesterday, a finch
flutter-flapped from the barn
like the sound of a horse
clearing its nose.
I could smell the sweet
sweat smell of the horse
coming around the corner.
Hear ripe grass ripping
into crunch and chew,
snort and stomp,
swish swish toss of tail.
Sometimes the old life
passes over this way, smooth
and warm like a neck,
like a velvet nose
lipping my hair.

*

Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Away (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and have appeared in publications such as The Dewdrop, Gyroscope Review, Wild Roof Journal, and others. Find her on Instagram @jwfilbrun.

Two Poems by Jenna Wysong Filbrun

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My Loves, the Earth, My Bones
         after a diagnosis of osteoporosis at age 33

Sometimes finitude screams in my head
even when I try to let it be.
Like I try to wear with serenity
the fact that my bones are hollowing.
But there is a desperate edge to the miles.
As if I could hallow the bones as they hollow –
fill them with enough mountaintop,
enough deep woods to last
past when they’re too gone to take me there.

I am not talking only of bones.
I want to hear how the good things last
if what holds us up
can’t outlast us.

That’s what I think as I traipse
down the mountain in the rain
or wake up panicked in the night.
I go deeper into the mists of love
I need like thunder to see
even as I cling to a horse
in a dream, galloping
through the dark
with no reins.

*

On Not Becoming Bitter
         to loneliness

Someone is sending you a message.
It says maybe we could be friends.

It says you do not have to bow to the gods
of What People Think and What People Say.

It says remember how the ruby-throated hummingbird
hung in the air to look you in the eye, and

wasn’t it just yesterday you were out
combing the maples for the owl

you thought you heard, whose hoots
rippled from deep in the leaves like a murmur?

It says if you let the questions unspool,
they will carry you down

their sparkling trails toward sleep.
The way through will come to you later.

It says don’t give up.
If it hurts, it is love.

What you think you see
is only the shadow of something more.

What you know
is a gift I would like to open.

It says things
come apart.

You have to let them
come apart.

*

Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Away (Finishing Line Press, 2023), and the chapbook, The Unsaid Words (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in publications such as Deep Wild, The Dewdrop, EcoTheo Review, and others. Find her online at www.jennawysongfilbrun.wixsite.com/poetry or on Instagram @jwfilbrun.