Summer
2004
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Summer
2004
| Susan Terris |
| COLOR
OF SUMMER/WAIT OF WINTER |
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In the pond shallows, my feet - no longer
full-fleshed and firm - are
pale-veined leaves, slowly yellowing.
Water, too, is yellow in mid-morning light
and wedges of hard-eyed
minnows surge forward to nip my toes.
Later it will be hot. Later it will be
later. But not yet, I hope,
too late. A squint turns the sun-starred pond
to snow; and I can feel winter, its freeze
and thaw. How lost leaves become
decoupage in ice. How the past is unforgiven;
and how - even in cold - the memory of light
and new leaf and fresh skin still burn.
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| Susan Terris |
| OLD
GIRL CONSIDERS LIFE WITHOUT RAPTURE |
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An absence of leaping fish, no sudden vistas.
River without bends, without whitewater.
Why has the path by the river,
the one that leads up the mountain
been replaced by a blacktop road
where noise and commerce
strike the heart?
Where is the lover unmoved by
blacktop or money
who will cradle me in his arms,
hold me in the night, talk to me
of poetry, of dark love and bright trout?
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Susan Terris' book FIRE IS FAVORABLE TO THE
DREAMER was published by Arctos Press in 2003. It
has just been named “Best Poetry Book of 2003”
by the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association.
In 2004, Gary Metras at Adastra Press will publish
a letterpress edition of her chapbook POETIC LICENSE,
and Marsh Hawk Presshas published her third full-length
book NATURAL DEFENSES. Other recent books of poetry
are: CURVED SPACE (La Jolla Poets Press, 1998),
EYE OF THE HOLOCAUST (Arctos Press, 1999) and ANGELS
OF BATAAN (Pudding House Publications, 1999). Recent
fiction: NELL'S QUILT (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
Her journal publications include The Antioch Review,
The Midwest Quarterly, Ploughshares, Calyx, Shenandoah,
Hunger Mountain, Hotel Amerika, PoetryBay, Missouri
Review, and Southern California Anthology. With
CB Follett, she is co-editor of an annual anthology,
RUNES, A Review Of Poetry. |
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