Saturday, May 28, 2016

Poetry from Susan Millar DuMars


The  poems below are from Susan Millar DuMars. Susan is an Irish American poet living in Galway Ireland. We like them and think our readers will too.
                                                                   
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Both my poems are from my recently released book Bone Fire -- they are Barefoot and Reclamation. The latter poem, which has also been broadcast on national radio here in Ireland, is a positive poem about being menopausal, and is growing a little cult following all its own, as poems sometimes do.  Women a little younger than me tell me they find it hopeful (hopeful and menopause not being words one normally sees together), while women my age and older are more like, "Whew!  Someone said it!"  We may need more poems about being menopausal. Susan Millar DuMars

Reclamation
Susan Millar DuMars

The blood has stopped
and with it the need
to suckle lesser creatures.
My breasts are pale, cool
proud
and mine.

The blood has stopped
and with it the need
to shield smaller souls
inside me.
My womb calm.
Not weeping.
And it’s my womb.

I’m learning the pleasure
of empty.
The weight of one.
Nothing on my back
but a breeze
getting colder.

The blood has stopped
and with it the need
to grow anything
but older.

Barefoot
Susan Millar DuMars

Here she comes.
Joy, tripping down the field to me.
Her face light and bone.
She smells of rain
and oranges
her voice hard
and warm
like a wooden chair left out
in the sun.

Here she is.
Joy touches me
with her tiny starfish hands
and she is barefoot grass
first bite chocolate
every song I loved when I was nineteen.

She holds me
and I am peeking through a keyhole
at eternity’s shine.

1 comment:

Sean said...

Wonderful Susan. Thank you. Sean O'Torain.