| Two Poems by Dianne Williams Stepp | ||
Sojourn White, no serpent-green leaves taking on song, no roses pruned to their best canes, no imagined buds, clipped patches of lawn. Florid with autumnal blaze, let the creeper snake across the neighbor's fence at home. I don't miss it. Look here, my feet snug in woolens, the quilt, the bed, the stove. Outside a single wand of smoke lofts the lodge below. All right! It was the petunias, I confess. Seedy dames sagging from boxes. And the fuchsias' pursed lips! Not enough nectar left for moths. Here the pines are shrouded white, the lake a silver tongue of ice. Against barren cliffs, the yews are blackened twigs. Oh, let it go! Meditation No change under that flat stone, still the delicate roots veining the bared palm, still the potato bugs, little armadillos rolled into terrified balls. No change in the shadows leafing across that lawn, or the summer grass, brown-tipped with loneliness. The breeze chatters through the weeds leaving behind whole afternoons tipped on their sides like empty flower pots. So what if the freeway roars like the sea. So what if the white house stranded behind an island of concrete peels paint, and its fretted hedge of lilacs guards a car lot. Look, here comes an old woman on two sticks poking in the brambles for berries, and there, that old apple is flush with its scaly green knobs. _________________________________________________________________________ DIANNE WILLIAMS STEPP is a recent graduate for the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. Her poetry has appeared in Willow Springs, Fireweed, The Bellowing Ark and the Hawaii-Pacific Review. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship. |