Bluemont

                     in memory of poet Kathy Mitchell


She lived there with her
poems, where I would drive
my lines the long way
‘round and nights we’d feast
on country squash and fresh-picked
words, dig into blue-
berry pie and verse, deliberate
life. Now any talk there is

is with her secluded
words, text without foot-
notes, singular papers, orphaned
books, all voice returned now only
in my head, where I want
to write her back
into the lines I now see
worked by her more sacred
than we knew then.




first published in Rosebud #30
© 2004 DJ Gaskin