Poetry by Bonnie Demerjian
Because my dearest friends are dead or distant
I eavesdrop on the sparrows’ whispered conversation in the blue-green grass.
Because the red-hot scream of chainsaws makes the forest weep,
I bury my face in the cool fountain of lobelias.
Because the flag is like a furious fist,
I melt into the marbled eyes of my old-lady dog.
Because lies multiply like hawkweed on the highway,
I harvest the truth of blueberries.
Because the longed-for heat of summer became instead a fiery furnace,
I rejoice in rain and the chance to pull on socks again.
Because the whirling hulla hoop of years slows and settles,
I putter among exuberant late-blooming lilies. They have no foretaste of grief.
Because these burdens must not win the day,
I beckon to the easeful gulls to lift our weight.
Bonnie Demerjian lives in Southeast Alaska and much of her writing is flavored by this place of forest and ocean. She has written four non-fiction books about the region and her poetry has been published in Blue Heron Review, Pure Slush, Tidal Echoes, and Alaska Women Speak, among others.
