The Writing of Patricia Twining-Obarski

In the bruised-blue light before dawn,

I run my fingers down the length

Of surgical scars that crisscross

Your solar plexus taking the appearance of

In the blue light

Before dawn,

I run my fingers

Along your surgical scars

Just after sunrise, I trudge over

The firm, New England soil

Of Oak Grove Cemetery

With my fishing gear in hand

I nicknamed the baby “Chief”

A commanding presence that he is

Restraint protested in a playpen

Walking at nine months

I share the image of her face

The arched cheekbones

The sculpted nose

The high forehead

In ancient Eturia, the Etruscans became like the Moon

The shores of Lake Nemi at the Sanctuary of the Goddess of Diana,

The strega called down the full moon

Moonbeams merging into lake waters

My husband needs music to fall asleep

Melodies imparting through the darkness

A violin bowing melancholy Irish Aires

The quaver of breathy pan flutes

June’s approach to fashion was non-chantlant at best. Her appearance was rumbled looking, an after thought, always loose fitting. She predominately wore baggy, faded jeans and Indian style tunics and caftan belts. She looked like a throw back from the 60’s. She reminded Lilly of Janis Joplin. She sported long, straggling, salt and pepper hair, parted in the middle.

A Wandering Pilgrim

In search of holy land

I believe in possibilities unseen

Fairy sprites in elder trees,

You are gone

Silhouetted farmhands glean the haycocks

Over divested fields

Skeletal limbs of craggy fruit trees

On the cave wall, the shaman

Bison-skinned, bear-clawed

A headdress of antlers

In his right arm, a cudgel raised

Falling

From billowed clouds

Pellets of snow

I spent the winter reading verse

Watching the wet snow

Bend fragile boughs

There must be

A reckoning

Vertical Cuts

An offering of blood

Be still

Don't move a muscle

Don't flinch

Just wait

I renewed my library card

When the diagnosis was confirmed

Urgently, I needed books to read

Become lost in words

Broken shells scatter the shore

Remnants of a people lost

Victims of the tides of fate

Ensconced in sandy shoals, once whole,

Sabbath Reynolds was born in the Deep South in 1950’s. As her name suggests, her parents were deeply religious. These days, her family attended a Southern Baptist church. Sabbath’s parents, Ruthann and Caleb, for many years, had been seeking the right spiritual path. They explored many Protestant denominations - Mormon, Pentecostal, and Jehovah Witness. They preferred an evangelical approach to religion.

Our poise serene

Our posture upright

Our feet firmly planted

On the shoreline of Eden Pond

From the day you first came to live with us – your love was so freely given. After a summer of resistance, I persuaded you – though my use of quiet strength and perseverance – that I could be trusted. I would not harm you.

Cassandra, of the royal house of Troy,

Enamored, by Apollo, love and desire,

Overtures, you spurned

The gray cat makes no demands on me

Just a bit of comfort is sought

In the crook of my arm

A nest of repose, in dreams

Pleasure found

In the spirit of the Stevie Nicks’ song, “The Edge of Seventeen”, the age of 17 is a threshold of opportunity on the doors to the adult life that lies ahead; the excitement of finishing high school, making future plans, moving full speed on the road of life. The autumn of 1974, Rick planned to join the Navy after graduation. See the world. Visit exotic and distant lands.

The age of seventeen is a time filled with thoughts of opportunity; the excitement of finishing high school, making future plans, moving full speed on the road of life. The autumn of 1974, Rick planned to join the Navy after graduation. See the world. Visit exotic and distant lands. The focus of his world was also music, especially the music of The Beatles...

Nights of television static

Flickering cobalt blue

Floorboards creak

With the slightest movement

People say we can change evils in the world

With enough legislation, money, awareness

Idealism and hope

Disease, inequality, poverty banished

The stars are fading

Dimmed by the incandescence

Of city lights

I’ve spent my life searching

Daughter of the Moon

Beguiled by the borrowed light

Illuminated by the Sun

Bright gold chastened

Behind cloistered glass

The color palate of

The

Great

Oak

Tree

So much dust in the corners

Where the molding begin to crack

Crevices of broken tiles deepen into lesions

Tumors of Dust, pathogens, grow unabated

The famine’s darkest year, Black ’47,

The last of the seed tubers eaten,

The potato crop, a black, putrid stench,

Bare blackberry brambles

I drive north

From the Shaker village

A spiral road

Towards the foothills of the mountains

Archives of old documents

The scroll of microfilm

Searching for a clue

An inkling of Truth

The shade of the Winter Sky is moonstone

The first snowfall cascades

Sight is softened, sound subdued

Streetlights beacon like silver lodestars

Blueweed, the Gods made you

Configured from flowers

Meadowsweet, oak, and broom,

A consort to the Sun God

It was a family recipe

Passed down through the generations,

Tomato Sauce with Seared Lamb Shanks,

Prepared on a Sunday afternoon in the fall,

Death comes in threes....

My nana’s old world superstition

A person you would never anticipate

To pass away before their time

Trapped

In a house

Of mirrors

Divided selves

Your room, perpetually dark and musty,

Smoke-filled, windows tightly sealed

Against a rusted pane

Thin layers of onion-skinned dust

Light

Steadfast

Centered

Calm

They say I am like you

I would not know

I have photographs, tinged yellow,

Not memories

They say I am like you

I would not know

I have photographs, tinged yellow,

Not memories

It was bound to happen

Geologists predicted it

A symbol of New Hampshire,

Franconia Notch,

Remember me...

Singing through labors

Chores of tedium

Enlivening experience

I Remember...

The time of our love

Together

Luxuriant

The selkie longed for the sea again

There, she knew who she was

Free to slide between the worlds

Of sea and sand, bask on crags, jet-black

Your devotion visible

In simple gestures made

A milk-shake pureed,

Thick, cold and frothing,

Spirit of the Stone

What secrets do you keep?

Remnants of a ravaged

Civilization lost

I am 24 years old

I smoke too many cigarettes

Rasping my voice

Drink too many cups of coffee

At Chichen Itza

At the summit of the Stepped Pyramid

The ancient Mayans looked to the stars

Seeking answers to the Greater Mysteries

In Ancient Gaul,

Before the pillage of Rome

Descrecrated the Sacred Grove

The Druids gathered

Cotton Mather proselytized

Subdue the howling wilderness,

The soul-less Indians

Obliterate by all means necessary

The rock is grounded

In the shifting sea strand

Brave, strong, full of valor

A barrier in the rages of a storm

Mother was an anachronism of another age

Steeped in tradition, more genteel

Honorable men opened doors for ladies

In white gloves and pearls, a wife,

Last summer, a stray tiger kitten

Living in a strand of woods

Behind my home, appeared on my patio

Enticed by offerings

The purple star flower struggles

Against the plucking of my fingers

Late November,

On the stem, all the other blooms

I long to see the great trees of the world

Grand sequoias in northern California

Collasal in stature

Great with longevity, memory and history

I wish I could caper

Through lavender rich fields

Of Provence, fresh, clean scent

Clinging to my skin

The artifact was unearthed,

Carbon tested,

Imagine

Twenty thousand years old,

Virginia Dare

New World firstborn

Of Roanoke Colony

Disappeared

Timber wolves,

My totem animals,

Pack, tribal loyalty

The intense gaze

Chanting syllables foreign to my ear

Accompanied by strange instruments

Feral noises resound

Primal measured beats