One parting, yielding line
By M. Ann Reed
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One parting, yielding line
The spirit catches
you as you fall
splitting
hexagrams
on the wall
named Kou –
call of the dove,
the coupling of heaven
and earth:
two trigrams,
all solid masculine
lines, admit
one parting line,
the feminine two lips
speaking –
yielding
like the Red Sea
blessing unbidden –
then responds like
Native American Sacajawea, sculpted
from enduring obsidian,
her bidden wisdom
now a stone face covered
by a veil of water –
her tears catching
the full-moon lips parting –
falling down
A joint and fragile keeping
remembering Taiwanese parents whose twins died at birth, yet keep whispering secrets to them
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heart-beats initiate these twins in the womb their felt senses ask why? why separate gaping? conscious of being conscious? what if secrets fly out when our hearts break open?** why such radical solitude? apartheid? why are we broken like bread between two hands? two hands wonder if they will die when their hearts break open heart cells begin to speak with emergent brains companions, they are not alone their brains answer questions why the hollow points crowning our heads? why are we conscious of time? will we grow – evolve when our hearts break open? they hear “To call out separate name is a paradox. an act of love gradually unfolding.” and when the time is right they will let secrets emerge as their hearts keep breaking open * From Li Young Lee’s poem, “To hold”. **Refrain inspired by Mary Oliver's The Leaf and the Cloud. |
M. Ann Reed grew up with the early Irish Mayo Medical Community valuing holistic medical care, hospitality, compassion and the arts in medicine. She taught English Literature and Theory of Knowledge in Traditional Eastern European and Asian cultures that consider literature a medical art. Various literary arts journals are home to her poems such as the Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Antithesis Literary Arts Journal of Melbourne University, AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought, and Eastern Iowa Review. Finishing Line Press recently released her chapbook, 'making oxygen, remaining inside this pure hollow note.”
Other works by M. Ann Reed in AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
"If you were all water (and you mostly are)"
"At the Mad Hatter-March Hare art gallery"
"Monet at the Minneapolis Art Institute (a partial ekphrastic)"
"Blow out your candles, the world is lit by fire."
"Did you fall or rise from the cloud of unknowing?"