April is Poetry Month with Joan Howard

 

Joan Howard

                 The Kayak Ride

You lived and are the summer sun and wind,
I close my eyes and feel soft warmth and light
in waves and twisting ribbons on my skin,
quick golden circles’ ever-upward flight.

Yet still, my dreams and memories of you

 are  shards, ice barriers, so when I ride

lake’s mirrored glass, reflected clouds describe
my loss in watered depths of heaven’s blue.

An emptiness as vast as sky’s clear height
of clouds’ reversal in the water’s deep
their shapes extending down the infinite,
slow whites that drift a fathomless abyss.

And you―this―are embraced by warbler’s call,

shore’s forest reach, the waiting, radiant all.

 published in  www.mezzocammin.com January 2020

 

Joan Howard earned a B.A. In German Literature at Indiana University, an M.A. from the University of Oregon and studied in Munich, Germany, and the University of Georgia.  She is a former teacher and lives in Athens, Georgia, and on the beautiful waters of Lake Chatuge in Hiawassee.  She enjoys birding, walking and kayaking.  She has written another book about her sister entitled Death and Empathy: My Sister Sue.  She is a member of North Carolina Writers Network, North Carolina Writers Network West, and the Georgia Poetry Society.