SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Phyllis Klein
San Francisco, California
Phyllis Klein was a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest (2017), the Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest (2019), and The Fischer Prize, (2019) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2018). Her new book
The Full Moon Herald, a poetry newspaper, is available from Grayson Books. She sees writing as artistic dialogue between author and readers—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels.
two poems by Phyllis Klein
My Friend Judy Sends Pictures
From Joshua Tree
during the super bloom, meadows like cakes frosted
with sugar creams, pinks, yellows, candy springs
out of the ground. Ephemeral, like a birthday
or a wedding, marriage of tiny sleeping seeds to the rain—
the prince’s kiss that wakens them to life.
To the air, the breeze, sun and heat. To the atmosphere,
what is above, clouds dancing. Can you hear their chorus
as they chatter in various pitches? Lupine, children
on a playground, band rehearsals of the asters,
evening primrose calling in wonder, an open air recital.
Look at me, look at us, then, Goodbye, goodbye, exhausted
droops, then skeletons, ghosts, leaving us to the summer swelter.
And Then I Read This to Her
What did she teach me? Everything. With a smile,
and patience, that thing the mountains know. And
honesty. The rise of it into the heights of her language,
her carriage, her voice as she performs. How to find
myself in lines, take what I know, sculpt it into
a tower of understanding. Find an image, a tree at
the treeline, snow at the peak of something. The gifts
you can’t really say in words, hard as you try.