Johnson County Library Program Gives a Voice to Incarcerated Writers
‘Voiceless’ Inmates Find Healing Through Poetry Program
Easter Sunday Mount Ashland
Icy spring?winds sing,
Through mountain pines flocked with Easter snow,
Fresh?songs of love and hope
On Easter last year, a good?friend, my dog and I hiked Mt. Ashland during a wildly windy?snow storm, nearly a blizzard. I wrote the poem, above, to honor our joyful?Easter celebration,?playing?in untouched snow drifts and chasing each other around sky-high evergreen trees. Our laughter echoed in the majestic silence, cradling?us amid the unspeakable beauty. Though surrounded by winter’s?purest and finest, if one looked and listened?closely?between the snowflakes, spring was whispering her promise of rebirth.
Today, Easter Sunday, 2016, I left early for church and walked out into a silent, serene?snowfall. Enormous, wet?snowflakes gently drifted from the dark gray sky, covering the ground. Again, through the snow, I felt the promise we are assured every year–even the?coldest, longest?winter will end and spring will come. Nature, and our spirits, will bloom and flower once again. In a?world that doesn’t offer many guarantees, we have this promise and can hold this hope, even when winter is at its very harshest.
Whenever I sew, I think of you.
Mending a pair of jeans this evening, I thought about when you learned to sew.
Your?art, and those skills, metamorphosed into the wings upon which your gift flies and has?for many years now.
I watched you leave the nest, testing fragile, tentative feathers, despite being smothered by a broken heart–topped with?disappointment from a door you wished had opened, but didn’t and wouldn’t.
You packed your own sunshine, and have carried it with you, wherever the journey has flown?you.
Whenever I think of you, I am joy.
Setting sun.
Still October?pond.
End-of-day sunlight?crafting?silver glass from cool water.
Fall’s best offering,
Leaves in red, yellow, orange,
weave shafts of golden light
?through?self-made?shadows,
that dance across the liquid mirror
to the silent song?of dusk.
Icy spring?winds sing,
Through mountain pines flocked with Easter snow,
Fresh?songs of love and hope
For Terrie
For my friend, ?Jamie, who is beauty. Some wear it. Some own it. She does both.
Her Other Car ? She butters her toastWith rays from the morning sun;She makes jewelry
With tools that sing beautiful songs
And she follows her dreams, riding a unicorn with wings
