I hold between my fingers
its lack of suitability for this task
to take apart the earth beneath me
for the memories grow together
like moldy pages, impossible
to separate: the celery fields,
striped black and green, July 4
corn and purple chicory, salted
sand of San Diego, lit ribbons
of LA traffic, twin downtowns
still climbing over Phoenix’s
saguaro-studded sun-splayed
hills, the dark lake waters that
lap and lick the weedy shore.
When I most need to accept
I cannot be only here and not
there and there at the same time:
thus the needle to pry the places
apart, but the way needles are
is that they travel in and out,
knotting as they move about.
Behold the Needle
Luanne Castle’s, PhD, chapbook Kin Types (Finishing Line Press) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award; her first poetry collection, Doll God (Aldrich Press), won the 2015 New Mexico–Arizona Book Award; and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, and the American Journal of Poetry, among others.
Congratulations Luanne Wonderful..love the poem
Good one
This is so winsome and apt.
Lovely, Luanne. I love the weaving and threading of images, places and memories not to mention the sweet rhyming couplet at the end.
A beautiful poem, Luanne!
The images are so enjoyable here, Luanne. Nice that the poem’s title and the journal’s title are connected. Wonderful!
So very nice!