April Poetry: JoEllen Moldoff

In recognition of Poetry Month, and to celebrate and highlight our treasure trove of Orcas Island poets, Orcas Issues is pleased and honored to again offer daily poetry during April.

My art

— by JoEllen Moldoff —

fell in love with crayons,
then pencils, then pen and ink.

It printed letters in straight back chairs
and colored flowers inside the lines.

One morning it began to float in the wind,
on papers bathed in rainwater,
then parched in sunlight.

It grew blue and greens,
learned how to swim.

My art began to dream
in orange, turquoise, vermillion.

It journeyed to Mexico where houses
were fruit—mango, papaya, limón.

There my art fell in love
with the lucent morning

and painted the silent stars,
invisible in daylight.

Field Calls To Grass

……….After Eduardo Galiano’s poem, “Callings”

— by JoEllen Moldoff —

Field calls to grass
which spreads a carpet
beneath sky.

Grass calls to deer
by which it is nourished.

Deer calls to trees
which encircle the field
and breathe the wind in and out.

Wind calls to sky
which moves the sun and clouds.

A Great Blue Heron hears the field of grass
call her name and flies from the woods.

Blue wings, blue sky.

Sorry, I Don’t Have A Poem Today

— by JoEllen Moldoff —

I don’t even have
one syllable of a poem.

But I can write air,
for its blues and wind

and water
for its sounds.

Unlike the poem
I don’t have today

a no sound-, no color-,
no idea-poem.

Sorry, but today I must resign myself
to poemlessness,

unlike mountains, clouds, rivers, rain,
plants and animals who never go poemless

and never have to apologize