Showing posts with label Age is Just a Color. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Age is Just a Color. Show all posts

Saturday, January 11, 2025

Older

 

Photo © Jennifer Wagner

 

When another new year trembles

beneath my feet,

 

golden

and merciless,

 

black

and heaven-sent—

 

the path obscure

but coming to light—

 

it’s never without thorns,

even while glowing.

 

Cohen said there is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

 

I’ll forget my perfect offering.

 

The journey sometimes breaks me, but tells me, too,

the cracks are how

 

the light shines out of you.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Windswept

 

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

The bones of my legs feel hollow,

wind tangles my hair,

 

the sun, past noon,

nudges my back

 

as my silhouette makes

a thin sketch limned in the dust.

 

I couldn’t read the room

for the call of too many voices,

 

or absence of one.

That’s why I’m out here

 

with the other nomads

like spent leaves

 

clustered around the edge

looking down into

 

the cold kisses

of the Colorado.

 

My skin, too, is cracking

with time—a horse

 

galloping away

back over my shoulder.

 

I glance at the oil left in my lamp

with a sense that I’m still waiting

 

for the wind to return

my spent voice

 

swallowed up

in the rush of deep black river,

 

to ride its echo back

to that which once was lush, was green.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

The Sunday Whirl