I realize this is a bit of a weighty subject, coming on the heels of yesterday's post, but I have finished a poem and am starting another. I have had many years of poetry-silence as I finished my prose work, so it's nice to see the well filling up again.
Witch Hazel
Nothing returns her to me
like this scent. The woman on the bottle’s different
than in childhood: a sorceress with wild red hair,
leafy branches over her head like torches.
My mother’s bottle was utilitarian, round glass,
with a line drawing on the label of a stern Victorian profile,
but the fragrance is the same as the one
that filled my room when she poured just a little
into her cupped hand, to stroke on my skin during illness:
wet earth, roots, autumn woods steeped in rain and shadow.
How is it that I grew away from her?
How is it that she closed her eyes
against this world, her hands stilled, never to quench
the fever of my grief with any elixir,
her bones fragile now, and white as a handful of dry twigs
broken and scattered for divination,
their ciphers a hoarded message waiting
in the coffers of silence and the absolute dark.
My name is Joan McMillan and this blog is, as Emily Dickinson says, "my letter to the world." I am currently working on a nonfiction book about the murder of a young woman, Asha Veil, born Joanna Dragunowicz, and her unborn daughter, Anina, on September 9, 2006. My book is meant to honor her life and illuminate the need to create a safer world for women and children.
To read an excerpt from the book, please click on the following link:
ashaveilbook.blogspot.com
An excerpt from The Pleasure Palace, my romantic comedy, can be found here:
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