Linda Parsons: Two Poems

Come Home

Tonight the gloaming is a shadowbox
of corridors, time-dimmed as the Sunday
School room of ancient ladies my grandmother
called Miss in formality: Miss Rose Davis,
Miss Mary Holt. The ancient world mapped
those yellowed walls—Paul’s travels
through Antioch in Syria, Macedonia,
Corinth. Paul the tentmaker mending
the knotted nets, converted in a flash
to a fisher of men.

Cicadas start late this summer, not yet
a blast like Paul’s fiery Damascus moment—
more like my grandmother singing
from the Broadman, her vibrato rising
and settling around me, already asleep
in her lap. Take me, take me, mememe,
they rapture in high fidelity, their invitation
in the half-light: Ye who are weary,
come home.

Nearing seventy, my own gloaming,
I watch only for the soft tent of night
to fall. Insect voices I wait for all year
call from the canopy, primitive and unnamable.
The portals of home always lit, always open,
map where I’ve tripped and was pardoned
beyond reason, blasted deaf and blind
by mercy. Take me, I reply, me,
and they open wider still.

~

Garden Medicine

Near dark, I spread my stones on the wicker table—
aventurine for blood and the eyes, amethyst

for grounding, rose quartz honed to prism.
Lit sage winds pure and white to the cupola,

gazebo feathered with tall phlox, begonia,
spent lunaria. My friend has asked a prayer,

a blessing to call back her sight from its heavy
curtain. I spread my ceremony as night shadows,

call vessels to untangle iron and salt, the muscle
of heart to unknot, windows flung open

to blessed light. I’m not a healer, though maybe
I am—my ordinary hands laid on the scathing past

to cool its sear, my palms a bowl cupping
the last drop of day in blind descent.

Come, hawk’s wrought vision, freshet flow
and release, bless even the mockers’ harangue

as I enter the garden, huff at my shoulder
and head, huff the air split in attack

even in dreams. Bring us all to the nest,
woven scrap and moss, uncover our eyes

so that we may see the scales drop
to the compromised ground.

Copyright 2023 Linda Parsons. From Valediction (Madville Publishing, 2023). Included by permission of the author and publisher.

Poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons has published work in The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, Shenandoah, and American Life in Poetry. Valediction is her sixth collection.