Three Poems by Kim Ports Parsons

 

Morning Glory Pool, Yellowstone

 

How the earth carries the memory

of birth in this deep pocket,

a cauldron of colour.

 

How the cauldron opens to the wide sky

and the sky genuflects,

yellow-gold, turquoise.

 

How the turquoise deepens and sinks,

fathomless. How the drifting steam

clouds and whispers.

 

How the whispers murmur around the edges

of our eyes, and our eyes cannot

dive deep enough.

 

How to store enough of this?

How to recall all that smoulders there?

How to shift the weight of what is lost?

 

A person could fall in,

peering into that swirling mirror,

perched on unsteady ground.

 

Such a cavern

carved inside each of us.

A sudden break and one small slip.

 

 

Dream of Calling the Soldiers Home

 

Come at once.

Take the path to the laurels.

The table of moss

shines green among the bracken.

 

Leave the battles, the smouldering

guns, the endless marches.

Slip off the heavy boots,

stiff with the mud of desperation.

 

Under the lacy cathedral,

biscuits with honey, berries

with cream, sounds of towhees

rustling. Only the jealous jay is crying.

 

Sun through leaves will soften

scars. Silky petals will open

hands. Once again, water

will taste clean on the tongue.

 

 

Woman on a Barrier Island

 

Beyond the breakers, the smoothest waves: the slow rise and fall of the landscape she’s left. She stands at the moving edges of water, uncertain endings and beginnings. She sent her old lover bits of wild sea oats and a moon snail shell. Each day an eclipse of the past.

Almost empty beach stretches away. At the closest pier, a fisherman calls down to a woman on a blanket, his mouth a grey circle, then a line.

Dolphins leap just far enough away, and she wades into the water, brushes through seaweed, pushes through longing, casts herself on the water.

How to catch a new and stronger self? What bait to set? Sea-blue spreads from her centre.

Striped pompano leap over her belly. Again, again, they arc, as she floats, flashing silver. Laughter rises inside her, bubbles up like possibility, like what’s next.

Kim Ports Parsons grew up near Baltimore, earned degrees, and worked in education for thirty years. Now she lives near Shenandoah National Park, walks, writes, gardens, and volunteers for Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry. Her poems appear in many print and online publications, including Skylight 47, LIVE ENCOUNTERS, Poetry Ireland Review and Vox Populi and have been nominated for a Pushcart. Her first collection, The Mayapple Forest (Terrapin Books 2022), was a finalist for the North American Book Award, a national competition sponsored by the Poetry Society of Virginia. Visit her at www.KimPortsParsons.com.