Richard Widerkehr
Early Memory
There's this cool water, the flickering leaves—
two grown-ups cradle me in the green light
at Alley Pond. Are they Rosalie and Red?
Did they hold my sister? Where are our parents?
Maybe at the end of this life, a dream of water.
The necessary fingers of the leaves.
Bio
Richard Widerkehr earned his M.A. from Columbia University and won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan. His second book of poems is In The Presence Of Absence (MoonPath Press); one poem in it was read on Writer's Almanac, and one was posted on Verse Daily. Recent work has appeared in Shot Glass Journal, Rattle, Arts & Letters, The Binnacle, Bellevue Literary Review, Chiron Review, Crab Creek Review, The MacGuffin, Third Wednesday, and Measure. Other work is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Avatar, Blueline, Evening Street Review, and Raven Chronicles. He won three prizes in poetry contests at The Bridge and first prize for a short story at the Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference. He's worked as case manager with the mentally ill and, later, taught writing workshops at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, and lives near Bellingham, WA.