https://www.bigdayofgiving.org/sacpoetrycenter
Katy Brown is a retired Social Worker, a proud grandmother, and the
owner of a camera. She hates housework, tolerates chaos, loves Thai
food, and accumulates books. She has written some, traveled a little, and
taken roughly some zillion photographs. It is simply astonishing that she is
allowed in civilized company.
Brandishing Light
Through the viewfinder of my camera,
I understand the vocabulary of light:
colors, my adverbs—
shadows, my nouns.
Every object erupts with radiance,
combusts with intensity,
composes itself momen-by- moment
in poetry of pure symbol.
This is the structure I prefer:
not words that re-define awareness
but a wraith of shadow,
an exaltation of brilliance.
Words confuse the mind—
require selection and ordering;
they must march to grammar’s rules,
Webster’s spelling.
Poets deal in twice-translated reality:
they rummage for the right words,
steering the reader to uncover meaning.
Poetry is too hard.
I prefer the relative silence of a camera,
the quick detention of an instant—
that sudden arc that ignites
one awareness with another.
I yearn to speak in wavelengths of color,
compose angles and planes and curves,
fall into vortices of darkness:
I want to brandish light.
—Katy Brown
Phillip Larrea is the author of Our Patch (Writing Knights Press), We the People
(Cold River Press), and his latest collection, Part Time Job (Sybaritic Press), He has also
edited the annual print anthology, Sacramento Voices from 2013-2016. Phillip’s full-time
job as a personal finance and investment writer under the moniker “minutedots” often
informs his part-time job as poet and essayist.
A Spring Mood
I.
Spring stares dully ruminating
on some pattern in the weave
directly before her like so much apophenia.
This is not the apex of cherry blowpop
afternoon gaity
sweet liquor and salty banter.
No, almost everyone has gone.
She hears cruel Mr. Winter’s last words blast
as he passes by, though not yet out of sight.
Summer leaves a message
saying “We absolutely must make plans!”
But Spring is moody – and just not in the mood.
At least, not right now anyway…
II.
On this perfectly calm
wonderfully balmy day
Spring swears that from here on out
she will always be this way.
This with absolute conviction
and solemn utter sincerity.
She may even believe it herself.
Certainly, none would dare call her a liar.
There are other Springs however,
who were not consulted in that moment.
Who would never make such a pledge,
so honestly could not be blamed
if a southerly breeze should graze
Spring buds with its fingertips,
when warm becomes heated
and promises of temperate forgotten.
Or with an April squall
after a particularly wet winter,
that old Carmathen Oak
should finally topple over uprooted.
Pointless, fruitless, indeed vain
to believe that one Spring day
should be like another
when it is simply not in her nature
