Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Jean Valentine

 The poet Jean Valentine in 2017. She favored clear, taut images, so concise they could seem like fragments. 


The River at Wolf 

Coming east we left the animals
pelican beaver osprey muskrat and snake   
their hair and skin and feathers
their eyes in the dark: red and green.   
Your finger drawing my mouth.

Blessed are they who remember
that what they now have they once longed for.

A day a year ago last summer
God filled me with himself, like gold, inside,   
deeper inside than marrow.

This close to God this close to you:
walking into the river at Wolf with
the animals. The snake’s
green skin, lit from inside. Our second life.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Barbara Guest

  Santa Fe Trail I go separately The sweet knees of oxen have pressed a path for me ghosts with ingots have burned their bare hands it is th...