THE HANDSTAND

NOVEMBER 2003

HAVE YOU SEEN HER ?

Have you seen the poet today ?

Or is she as woman alone....

Bad luck and a superstition ;

Indeed, has she been seen ?

Has she, as woman only,

Burnished her silver hair

With a turquoise bead

To cut away the curl

Behind her ear ?

Thrilling to the fire in her arms

Turning toward the sun…

In her hands she feels the tongues

Of the febrile nerve.

On her mouth she senses the tough

Beat of her blood, rhythm

She twists in a tort of verse.

A catapult of the sling stone,

She casts, she hurls the note.

Rest, for her, as the dancer,

Weight on the one foot ; heron bird

In the shallows where an eel

Hides under a stone…

She may rise in flight

As a villain, who turns himself to thunder,

But this poet moves as the foliage

Streams of the trees.

This poet… in a glimpse of blue

Sky, wrestles only with light,

A threshold, a door, in the mind.

jocelyn braddell ©2000