My Edmonds News is pleased to present the latest installment of Poet’s Corner, presented by the Edmonds-based EPIC Poetry Group.

If Wishes Were Horses

I wish I had a cranberry bog
Full of tart fresh berries
Rolling in the water shallow
Perfectly round and red as shame

I’d wear my polka-dotted-hip-high waders
And harvest fruit with a butterfly net
Childlike I’d ford the waters
Bringing home the berry bounty

I’d wash them though they’re already clean
To feel their smoothness and buoyancy
Toss them in a sweetened batter
And bake them over applewood fire

I wish I had a cranberry bog
Full of tart fresh berries
Rolling in the water shallow
Perfectly round and red as shame

Cynthia Hénon

~ ~ ~ ~

Solstice at Münster

We were nine that summer
of the Baltic Sea
Floating on the raft
tied up at the dock
teasing the myriad jellyfish
with our suntanned toes

Wading out in the shallows
to the island of the swans
where we’d spy on
their secret lovenest
under the afterhours light
of the nordic sky

It was so long ago!
but I’m there with you
braiding your impossibly fine
soft blonde hair
the forever children
of the rocky islands

Cynthia Hénon

~ ~ ~ ~

Anachronisms

It is written on Brad Pitt’s forearm
an anglicized paraphrasing of
the Sufi mystic poet Rumi

I met you there, in the words of that tattoo,
snuck into your psyche
burrowed under your skin

our every meeting a dance
our conversations a song

but hearts wax and hearts wane
the night sky darkens religiously
as if all the ink in the world has stained us

only tiny sparks of memory sustain love
nostalgic notes of the swing song
playing on your Sony Discman

late night call from a telephone booth
your last dime spent to hear my waiting voice

Cynthia Hénon

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Cynthia Hénon is a poet, yoga teacher and Mama bear. Her work can be found in EPIC Poetry Group’s anthology, Soundings of the Salish Sea. She lives with her family in beautiful Edmonds.