Poetry

Pixabay photo

By

Penn Kemp

Solstice

Insects shrill. A thrum as of clacking bones.

Today tallies a long count of creation cycles.

On this winter solstice we climb our Sacred

Tree to enter wide zones of silence through

the doorway of darkness, our canoe riding

white rivers of night. The elliptic crosses

Milky Way precisely now, when elements

merge in a dark rift of source and return.

Cacti and palm leaves rustle dry in the ruins.

Terror cracks the heart open. Rivulets run

a scarlet sap to appease unknown gods be-

yond us. Blooming and blessing, this wound

wound tight round knots of surmise reveals so

little before our offering is received in sunrise.

The Pageant

On the Moon after Solstice

you dream of hiking contours

to cathedral carol service.

Singing in the cavern of nave,

omphalos to the world, you curve

on a rounded meridian of joy to outer

space, linking with others of like mind.

You race to catch the authors

to know the next act. Old tales

tell themselves new.

You connect fragments, dropping

your lines, dropping me a line

in the cheer of retrieval.

Rings of companions collaborate,

not wanting to merely recapitulate

events of the day or to invent

night’s happenstance.

Something’s given, something

larger than the single self.

Presently you’ll know the story

as it is happening to you.

Singly or together our dreams

direct us, as if night-given leads

to true script. What is real

agitates dream into action.

At peace out there, you spot a plug,

an electric cord on the floor of

the heavens. You switch on

the globe.

The earth lights incandescent.

Penn Kemp

Penn Kemp is an activist Canadian poet, playwright and editor.  Her latest works are two plays celebrating local hero and explorer, Teresa Harris, produced in 2017 and published by Playwrights Guild of Canada. Recent books include Barbaric Cultural Practice (quattrobooks.ca/books/barbaric-cultural-practice/) and two anthologies edited, Women and Multimedia and Performing Women (http://poets.ca/feministcaucus/livingarchives/). See www.pennkemp.weebly.com.