Joan Saunders
The Pleading
(The last morning after the Frost Place Poetry Festival)
After flat black, night breaks –
limbs stretch in a bed not mine for the last time.
The refrigerator coils in the corner
slow breathing – a two-note pulsing
of the fan overhead – muffled
sounds from behind the wall –
an obsessive sense of awareness
invades, incarcerates.
Frost, Dickinson, Hardy – all of them
and all of now, rampage through my brain.
Words, order of words, the benign meaning
or malignant consequence – cause and effect.
Lines form and break, colliding
with here and now and tomorrow.
Waiting for her – my fickle muse
to bring her soothing little cup to my mouth.
Bio
Joan Saunders love of poetry began at a very early age, when she carried around Robert Lewis Stevenson's, A Child's Garden of Verses constantly and stood on the kitchen table, reciting the poems from memory. She began writing poetry herself 10 years ago and since then, it has become a passion. She has studied poetry with well-known poets – Marge Piercy, Billy Collins and a host of others and currently hosts a weekly poetry workshop in her home, with seven other poets.