Mortals / Meditation by Catherine Zickgraf

Mortals

Come out on the back porch tonight. 

You can see Jupiter above the trees,

a clean spark beside our swollen moon. 

They’ll remain when we’re forgotten.  

 

There’s grandeur in this view of life. 

We’re small under the quilt of sky,

just mortals in the backyard weeds

on a rock rounding its ancient orbit.  

 

 

 

Meditation 

 

Sometimes you write at the riverbank, 

and your words stretch wings,

slip wind, glide away.

So you let them go with joy. 

 

Sometimes you hold ideas in the depths

until they grow rosettes 

feeding honeybees, then blow away 

like seeds when it’s time.

 

Deep in the caves, you trace back 

groundwater still carving out the chalk rock. 

And with the breath of candlelight

you move through the darkness

and the humid chill of earth’s stone web

where the shadows echo.  

 

Under the outside sun, 

streams turn to lakes and estuaries.

You study the clouds that hold in the sea, 

and you see it all with your mind, not eyes.  

 

Two lifetimes ago, Catherine Zickgraf performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published by Kelsay Books.

 

Find her on Substack @czickgraf. Watch/read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com

Banshee by Catherine Zickgraf

Her follicles have slowed releasing
auburn and gold into their pale straws.
Warmth dissipates from her hair.

Sungrazing comets flame
their brightest before death—
all glow with no dying flicker.

Gusts wail the valley out back.
Claws rip tangles, scalp mind.
In her sleep a barn owl shrieks.

Wet strands circle the drain.
Ashen threads drip fingers,
stick to walls, wrap toes.

Still she brushes her hair on the porch,
sheds and renews for spring’s nesting lark
who will cushion her hatch by instinct.

Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. Her work has appeared in Pank, Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Grief Diaries. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. 

 

Find her on twitter @czickgraf. Watch/read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com.

Haunt by Catherine Zickgraf

I visit myself in the basement sometimes.  

It’s layered more than four decades deep

with bins and boxes of important stuff 

that has lain untouched for years.

My younger spirits live down there

with the dust and bugs.

But I’ll never catch them to bathe them.

I’ll die before I can mop under them.

I have no idea how to clean up 

this pointless clutter that pertains to me. 

I should just have it all hauled away. 

Catherine Zickgraf’s main jobs are to write poetry and fold laundry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. 

Read and watch her at caththegreat.blogspot.com

Snow Frozen by Catherine Zickgraf

Mother, you sent me red-hooded and skinny, tasked

with gifts for your own Mother. In my basket

I carry apple bread under a gingham napkin.

Snow clothes the trees, their arms hold the forest.

I climb bridges of branch carcasses. Wood resting

awaits when billbugs and larva awake in their nests.

Holly limbs burst in a berry flush.

Your eggs have all cracked, streaming viscous and hushed.

Mother, I’ve lost the path—

trunk patterns changed in last spring’s seedling rush.

Where the hill seeps away from the roots of an oak  

I’ll hide from the wolves in the cheek of my cloak.  

Catherine Zickgraf’s main jobs are to hang out with her family and write poetry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press and The Grief Diaries. Her recent chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. 

Read and watch her at caththegreat.blogspot.com