Special Gifts

 Joanne Durham 

  

Photo by Joanne Durham

 By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

 Storyteller Joanne Durham shares love poems for Valentine’s Day.

 Says Joanne:

“I’ve been writing poetry since I was a little kid. My parents bought me a copy of The Golden Treasury of Poetry, and something clicked. But I didn’t get serious about my poetry until after I retired and thought, “Well, it’s now or never!” I thought I’d be an anomaly but come to find out there are so many older women writing. It’s meant a lot to me to find such a vibrant and supportive community of poets (including some young ones too!). I have several critique groups, and they keep me focused on having something ready to share and inspire me by letting me learn from and with many diverse poets.

 “I am also part of an Ekphrastic poetry writing group, which has been very generative for me. Art helps me find unexpected images that my memory might not have produced. I like Ekphrastic poetry so much that I have spent a lot of time studying it and am teaching workshops about it now.

 ‘Most of my love poems come from the everyday luck and joys of being married to a wonderful man for over forty years. Personal photographs helped me craft some of them; others are seared into my memory (like the truck accident)!”

 

 Orange Butterflies/Orange Blossoms

 

They match

the way lovers match,

 how lives blend into one

another, how for one

                  sunlit

                         moment

you can’t tell

wing from bloom

 

From On Shifting Shoals,

 

Falling in Love is the Wrong Idiom 

 Swept off our feet by that first wind of love

we do not fall like a discarded candy wrapper,

we rise -  a kite   a balloon   a swallow

 

And isn’t love like bread, slowly gathers the power

of bubbling yeast, leaving space

for one another to enter, don’t we rise to something delicious? 

 

Climbing the winding staircase of the old lighthouse,

yes, there’s love, steep but always a glimpse

of sky with a slice of promise

 

Even the morning after we argued, my fist slammed

against the wall, crashing our photograph

to the floor, we rise out of bed and pick up the pieces

 

because love isn’t squashed underfoot, and look

who we are now because we reached through

our shadows, met in the glare of uncertain selves.

 

The orange moon lifts off the horizon,

its reflection   on the sea   a path of shiny pebbles  

even as night falls, love rises

 

Traction

 Rain slams against the glass faster than wipers

can open an eyehole, and we’re still going 80, deeper

into darkness on Route 378 out of Sumter, heading home. 

I ask him to slow down, but his foot is heavy on the pedal

and my words are weightless. Then we spin a 360,

hydroplane across two lanes and head towards a thicket

of live oaks steep above a ravine. The last seconds

before we’ll crash widen like time’s dilated pupil. We reach

for each other’s hand, and I breathe my whole body

into our fingers’ steady lock. Then we hit the barrier

we couldn’t see in the downpour, bounce back

across the highway onto the wide grassy cushion

on the other side. A semi rumbles by,

but we’re bystanders now. We get out and walk

around our truck to look for damage, rain licking

our faces like a puppy delirious that we’re home. 

I know this night’s going to lift us awhile,

above who won’t listen, who’s too quick to judge.

When we lost traction, when there was nothing

to guide us but the white flash of instinct,

all we wanted was to make it or not, together.

 

 

Wading into the River

 

You’re knee-deep in the river, each sheaf of muscle

defined by sun spun through shadows

that embrace the arc of your raised arms.

Soon I’ll wade out to meet you, we’ll find the depth

to float together like that very first time

we came here. Our son, tossing rocks

into widening ripples, knows this place is special to us,

but doesn’t yet know the quake and shiver

of such baptism, though he will, ten years later,

when he sits in a café with someone he discovers

he wants to share his life with. I see myself

through your lens, an unassuming woman

on a nondescript shore, who holds your attention

and desire. The camera keeps us always

approaching, reveals the distance

we bridge, as sure-footed as anyone

on sand or riverbed, one or the other taking the first step.

 

 

Brothers-in-Arms Valentine’s Day Gun Sale

(advertised in The Island Sun)

 

In a world where

young men in prison

explain they didn’t plan

to kill,

they were just angry

and the gun was there,

 

In a world where guns

are always there,

a world that isn’t the world

but a small piece

of world that believes

guns belong everywhere,

 

In a small piece of world

trying so hard

to protect smallness,

where you only belong

if you look like me,

live like me,

hate like me,

 

In that small piece of world

a gun

can become

a Valentine.

 

All are from To Drink from a Wider Bowl

 

Read more about Joanne:

 

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2023/06/storyteller-of-week_9.html