"Weathering the Storm" by Amanda Pomeroy
2 poems by Athena Kildegaard
Shadow that Settles Against Its Substance
Not the light, but light's memory.
Not the grave, but the stone.
Not the mouth, the ear, the wound.
Not what I carry, but what is lifted from me.
The intimacies of sandbank,
of ash on wind, of leaf and seed borne downstream.
Not my mother's voice.
The mouth opens to sorrow,
the ear to shadow's course,
the wound to willow.
Making and Not Making
On the day a loved one dies
anything is possible. All
that is is something else.
The voices of the living
resemble the voices of the dead.
Nothing is familiar
when you turn back
to where you were.
You look down and
your hands are your mother's.
Laughing and crying
are indistinguishable. All the doors
open and whether you walk through
or not, your path is the same.
Not the light, but light's memory.
Not the grave, but the stone.
Not the mouth, the ear, the wound.
Not what I carry, but what is lifted from me.
The intimacies of sandbank,
of ash on wind, of leaf and seed borne downstream.
Not my mother's voice.
The mouth opens to sorrow,
the ear to shadow's course,
the wound to willow.
Making and Not Making
On the day a loved one dies
anything is possible. All
that is is something else.
The voices of the living
resemble the voices of the dead.
Nothing is familiar
when you turn back
to where you were.
You look down and
your hands are your mother's.
Laughing and crying
are indistinguishable. All the doors
open and whether you walk through
or not, your path is the same.
Athena Kildegaard is the author of four books of poetry, most recently /Ventriloquy/. She lives in Morris, Minnesota.
Amanda Pomeroy is a self-taught artist, a lover of life and beauty, and a connoisseur of all things unconventional. She is currently spending her days on a start-up business in Hoquiam, WA; an art gallery called Renegade Red, which is scheduled to open in the Spring of 2017. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Environment and Society at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where she lived for 15 years before returning to her home in Washington state in 2014. Biology and Environmental Science have always been a passion for her, and she hopes to one day incorporate her love of science into art. Two of her paintings hint at this aspiration, featuring bees alongside women, as an intimation of the crisis surrounding bee populations and the direct correlation to humans, both in cause and consequence. She believes, with conviction, that humans are symbiotes of the Earth, and that, individually, we hold no more grandeur than the tiny bee; albeit, just as essential.
