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[with 3 poems by Debra Kaufman]
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Walking Westerly, My Shadow Precedes Me
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She does not hear a warning
in the wren’s song,
+++++++++ as I do,
or see the ghost moon as an omen.
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She appears to have a jauntier step,
wilder hair, longer, slimmer limbs.
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Perhaps she is the me
I once was –
waitress, dancer, diary keeper.
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Nothing bad
has happened yet.
+++++++++ Soon
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she will trail a dangerous
fragrance, be sniffed out,
tracked, pinned down.
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Wind trembles the beech leaves.
The wren calls again.
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I step toward the past,
she into the future
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Debra Kaufman
from Outwalking the Shadow, Redhawk Press, Hickory, NC; © 2023.
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❦ ❦ ❦
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If you believe that everything is connected;
if you believe that matter and energy are conserved (not to mention angular momentum);
if you believe that the breath you’ve just taken into your body, its oxygen reddening your corpuscles, worked its way up the hill from the great red oak not tumbled in last spring’s tornado, and that when you release it a second from now it will begin to wisp its way back down to wait for the asters you’ve sowed on wind-scoured earth;
if you believe that your body is stardust, its phosphorus and calcium and that fleck of selenium, every element which is heavier than air;
if you believe that no distance is too far and no time too long a thread to tie everything together and extend the connection,
++++++++++ then believe this:
if you believe that matter and energy are conserved (not to mention angular momentum);
if you believe that the breath you’ve just taken into your body, its oxygen reddening your corpuscles, worked its way up the hill from the great red oak not tumbled in last spring’s tornado, and that when you release it a second from now it will begin to wisp its way back down to wait for the asters you’ve sowed on wind-scoured earth;
if you believe that your body is stardust, its phosphorus and calcium and that fleck of selenium, every element which is heavier than air;
if you believe that no distance is too far and no time too long a thread to tie everything together and extend the connection,
++++++++++ then believe this:
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when that wisp of a woman sitting on the couch beside your father and his baby sister, white-haired tiny flit of a woman no more substance than moonbeam, when she smiles it will light up the string of a million smiles stretching back so far that every smile since must take its cue, all the way back to the very first smile twenty-five years (less thirteen days) before you were born.
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Recall those smiles you can and hold onto them — you dancing while she plays Mozart on the piano and laughs; she holding the cake while you take a deep breath to blow; beaches and playgrounds, jokes and canasta, weddings and first smiles of your own babies shared with her. Most smiles have flown to continue their cycle, petal of a flower she will notice, bug she’ll try to pick up from the carpet, a noise or a vision in some other creature’s thread of existence . . .
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. . . but some precious few smiles are preserved in silver. Layers of atoms on glossy paper. Here’s one that her niece, your cousin, has just handed you, holding its connection to the others over seven decades in the bottom of a carton waiting for your gathering today. You hold it close for her to see and she smiles again.
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Look! Today’s smile! When you see it, recognize its provenance, its taxonomy, its lineage and inheritance from all that have preceded it. Accept its assurance. So much lost, so much consigned to this or that flimsy drawer in the cupboard of memory (yours) and so many keys to so many drawers misplaced (hers), but still firmly by that long and winding thread as tenuous as breath connected. Every wisp connected.
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❦ ❦ ❦
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The last time my mother
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spoke words I heard
I saw her see me in a flash:
You’re my daughter!
We walked the hall,
a circumference
around the single rooms.
Round and round.
Each time we passed
the common room
she’d point to the Christmas lights.
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On her bed lay a book
of her wedding photos.
I named the names, some small comfort.
I sang “Jacob’s Ladder”
and she smiled in that puzzled way.
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I meant to rub lotion on her legs –
her skin dry, tissue-paper thin –
but they were calling her
for supper. I kissed her cheek.
She kissed my hand,
did not want to let it go.
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I hoped we’d see a few sparrows
out her window, but
dark coming early, I saw only
our ghostly selves reflected there.
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Debra Kaufman
from Outwalking the Shadow, Redhawk Press, Hickory, NC; © 2023.
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Yet if we do not stare despair in its face
(I hear you say) how will we recognize
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the silver sliver of moon
when it hangs suspended like a dream?
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++++++++++ from Bearing / Witness
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Moonrise this past Monday was 2:37 PM in Elkin, North Carolina, USA. Waxing gibbous, we spot her on the one clear afternoon without rain. We won’t have to worry about finding our way through the darkened house at bedtime. Light will precede us, follow us, attend us. We can’t summon the moon or assign her course; we can only watch and trust she will return. We can only recognize and be grateful.
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I didn’t want to get out of bed that Monday morning. All the motivations and machinations of the preceding week – phone calls, site visits, family conferences – had cooled and dissipated. Who says energy is conserved? I sat at my desk, the to-do list accruing and scrolling in my head, not knowing how to begin. And then there was Debra Kaufman’s new book waiting patiently at the top of the pile. I opened to the first poem. The clamp on my innards released and breath returned.
. .
Moon, and of course shadow, are recurring images in Outwalking the Shadow. It is no coincidence that metaphor and metamorph are nearly homologues. Images may shift their shapes and meanings, may stand in for any number of times and spaces, but moon and shadow link arms, weave a net, cast it out and draw us in. Debra does more than create contrasts. Her poems are not satisfied to simply cast light into the dark umbra of grief. Enter her lines and welcome the shadow, relive it, discover how and who it has made you. Recognize that light blinds when it glares but enlightens when it glimmers, slivers, almost ephemeral as dream.
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Recognize that each of us lives with our shadow, and that even moonlight may cast one. Debra’s book is dedicated to her mother, Kathleen, and many of the poems explore her life, their life together, her final days, thereafter. Debra’s poems encompass much, much more than grieving, however. In many of her lines, I hear her speaking the very phrases I have needed to speak to my own heart. Perhaps you, too, have had mornings when you found it a burden to take even one step, when you felt empty and powerless and alone. These poems admit that. We are human and we carry our shadows. But these poems surprise themselves with sudden flashes and connections – a summoning of crows, a lesson learned, a visitation by spirits. Every time I turn another page, I discover more of what I need. Come, let us walk out together. There may still be joy if we open ourselves.
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❦
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More about Debra Kaufman, Outwalking the Shadow from Redhawk Press, and how to purchase HERE
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Let my heart swing open
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like French doors to a garden of blowsy flowers,
saloon doors where Kitty serves shots of rye,
a screen door with a farm wife waving you in,
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or let my heart be a picture window
through which I see everyone I have ever loved,
my breath steaming the glass, come in,
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we’ll turn up the party lights,
show all the passersby we’re dancing,
or better yet, let’s all spill out into the street,
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my heart a village music festival –
welcome teachers, firefighters, cashiers, nurses,
shysters and spinsters, salsa dancers a skateboarders,
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cat lovers, detasselers, twirlers and high-steppers,
come in you scuffed shoes, rhinestones, flannels,
I’ll be a mirror reflecting all y’all’s kindness,
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your clumsy moves and broken bits,
your sad patience and patient wildness,
your generosity, crankiness, haunted dreams –
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I’ll be the hostess sprinkling blessings like petals,
saying, The universe is here and so are we –
champagne for everyone!
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Debra Kaufman
from Outwalking the Shadow, Redhawk Press, Hickory, NC; © 2023.
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❦ ❦ ❦
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