The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Tue 5/19/2009)

[RetroLounge]

The Tree

Church bells at the same time as sirens.
Cold feet in the wake
of someone else’s umbrella.
Wet leaves like footprints
of some imaginary animal
too unfriendly to be imagined.

Cold morning, years past,
I leaned upon the great pine tree
we called the great pine tree
and in its branches always
the remnants of a house.
Why take down what might be

useable, one parent said. The other
said nothing. Still we never climbed,
or never built. Over years
the triangular frame grew wet and even
the wood became contagious rust.
When we played we played around it.

Cold winter and a broken pattern
of warm days on the blank canvas
of inevitable horizon.
Once I sent myself into winter alone.
Now it is dexterity that helps me
imagine the tree, not courage. Never that.

Katie Peterson

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http://www.wmich.edu/newissues/Images/Titles%20in%20Print/Peterson,%20Katie/Katie_Peterson.jpg

Katie Peterson was born in Menlo Park, California in 1974, the middle child of a gregarious Irish-American woman and a dry-witted half-Swede. She attended Stanford University and did graduate work in the department of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, completing a dissertation on Emily Dickinson and selflessness. She has published poems and prose in several journals, and has been a visiting Professor of Poetry at Deep Springs College, an experimental school and ranch in the desert of California.


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:hi:

RL

[blueraven95]

1. morning!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

2. Good Morning!

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

3. ...

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

5. ...

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. ~

Dexterity, I pine for it (sorry) :donut: :hi:

Deep Springs College sounds interesting

[RetroLounge]

7. ...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. Nice.

So many layers...

Thanks, Retro...

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

8. ...

:hi:

RL