SageGreenJournal.org

voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary

Phyllis Klein

San Francisco, California

Phyllis Klein was a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest (2017), the Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest (2019), and The Fischer Prize, (2019) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2018). Her new book 

The Full Moon Herald, a poetry newspaper, is available from Grayson Books. She sees writing as artistic dialogue between author and readers—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels.

two poems by Phyllis Klein

My Friend Judy Sends Pictures

From Joshua Tree

during the super bloom, meadows like cakes frosted

with sugar creams, pinks, yellows, candy springs

out of the ground. Ephemeral, like a birthday

or a wedding, marriage of tiny sleeping seeds to the rain—

the prince’s kiss that wakens them to life.

To the air, the breeze, sun and heat. To the atmosphere,

what is above, clouds dancing. Can you hear their chorus

as they chatter in various pitches? Lupine, children

on a playground, band rehearsals of the asters,

evening primrose calling in wonder, an open air recital.

Look at me, look at us, then, Goodbye, goodbye, exhausted

droops, then skeletons, ghosts, leaving us to the summer swelter.

And Then I Read This to Her

What did she teach me? Everything. With a smile,

and patience, that thing the mountains know. And

honesty. The rise of it into the heights of her language,

her carriage, her voice as she performs. How to find

myself in lines, take what I know, sculpt it into

a tower of understanding. Find an image, a tree at

the treeline, snow at the peak of something. The gifts

you can’t really say in words, hard as you try.

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SageGreenJournal.org is a non-commercial project, an online anthology, to share a poetic vision of the land we love.

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