Symbols of Life, Rebirth & Renewal (#2sdayPoems)

Tags

#2sDayPoems, Alice Walker, Andrea Cohen, blue bowls, Cherries, Daily Painter, flash fiction, Fourway Books, Furst Not Mine, Graywolf Press, Jane Kenyon, Kathy Wochele, New England, Orion, Poetry Foundation, Southern, women painters, Women writers

Kathy Wochele–“Cherries ” 8×10

Today’s picks are from New England masters, and are poems short in length but long on symbolism–life (blue bowls), rebirth (cherries) and renewal (robin), to name a few.  I also wanted to gift you with a beautiful bit of flash fiction centered around the same symbolism.

BONUS ALERT===> Click Alice Walker’s “My Mother’s Blue Bowl” to read the piece in its entirety.  And be sure to check out more work from Daily Painter Kathy Wochele, whose painting “Cherries” is featured above.

 

THE BLUE BOWL

by Jane Kenyon

Like primitives we buried the cat

with his bowl. Bare-handed

we scraped sand and gravel

back into the hole. It fell with a hiss

and thud on his side,

on his long red fur, the white feathers

that grew between his toes, and his

long, not to say aquiline, nose.

We stood and brushed each other off.

There are sorrows much keener than these.

Silent the rest of the day, we worked,

ate, stared, and slept. It stormed

all night; now it clears, and a robin…

 

FULL TEXT HERE (w/ audio)

from Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2005)

 

CHERRIES

by Andrea Cohen

 

In the minute it took
to fetch the blue bowl

from the kitchen
to pick the just-ripe

cherries, the blackbirds
had come. They picked

the branches clean, ascending
into their own blue bowl.

Lacking wings, I…

 

FULL TEXT HERE
latest collection: Furs Not Mine (Fourway, 2015)