PAT ANDRUS

 

Sacred

 

There is an engine of grace

I find on these grounds.

So, give me strength

I beg of the dirt.

Carry my weak legs

over hills and streams

I whisper to the land.

And fill me with eros

for un battling my own frigid rivers

so that every blade of grass

and ocean’s tongued shores

repeat my blood’s sacred journey

to the galaxy’s womb,

found through the eyes of any newborn

or in a cloud’s misty body

hovering over forests

bursting now with hemlock and pine.

 

Station Master

 

A sprite, carefree

in its days and ways,

weighted with

no Hallmark sludge,

peeks through

my barren windows

 

and I am dying

longing at least for

a purple Hyacinth 

to release its scent

into my wooden dreams.

 

“Can a moonbeam”

I mouth to the ethers

“cradle a barn

where a Morgan, one Jersey,

a sprinkle of mice, me,

could gather

for communion’s grace?”

 

In answer I cradle myself,

then stumble toward a northern wood

where I touch the elm

the oak, the maple,

know now what my mother, my father,

could not uncover

in their bed’s tangled secrets. 

 

And here I feel my moon,

my luna,

stroke this senescent face.

 

And I am no longer

a frozen wordsmith,

a docile-bleeding versifier,

 

but the truth of my blood

growing beyond sky’s smoldering stars

to the station master

of my being.

 

Kiss To The Land

 

Station Master

 

A sprite, carefree

in its days and ways,

weighted with

no Hallmark sludge,

peeks through

my barren windows

 

and I am dying

longing at least for

a purple Hyacinth 

to release its scent

into my wooden dreams.

 

“Can a moonbeam”

I mouth to the ethers

“cradle a barn

where a Morgan, one Jersey,

a sprinkle of mice, me,

could gather

for communion’s grace?”

 

In answer I cradle myself,

then stumble toward a northern wood

where I touch the elm

the oak, the maple,

know now what my mother, my father,

could not uncover

in their bed’s tangled secrets. 

 

And here I feel my moon,

my luna,

stroke this senescent face.

 

And I am no longer

a frozen wordsmith,

a docile-bleeding versifier,

 

but the truth of my blood

growing beyond sky’s smoldering stars

to the station master

of my being.

 

PAT ANDRUS

 

PAT ANDRUS: An MFA graduate of Goddard College, Pat Andrus’ works include a letterpress chapbook Daughter (Olivewood), Old Woman of Irish Blood, a collection partially funded by the NEA (Open Hand Publishing) and her most recent collection Fragments of the Universe (Blue Vortex Publishers).  In addition to teaching at Bellevue College several years, Andrus also served as an artist in residence for the state of Washington. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Writers Resist, Summation 20/21, the San Diego Poetry Annual, and the 27th Annual Border Voices Anthology Springtime in Paradise.