The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Andrea Potos



Finding My Mother in an Emily Dickinson Poem
           found poem

A quietness distilled
as Spring was born to June,
the dusk of breath that drew her
earlier in and then

as imperceptibly as grief
my mother lapsed away
that blue-gold afternoon—

my mother made her light escape
         into the beautiful.  


Just Born
          for Madeline Olive

Swathed in flannel, she mewled
a little in my arms and seemed to register
almost no weight at all.
The tiny crescent moons of her fingernails
rose in the air where she’d been
so suddenly gathered

as if to say, hmmm, so this
is the world of breath
and light; give me time
to adapt to your ways,
I don’t have the voice to tell you yet
all that I know.



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