August Poetry Postcard Fest

I am participating in a mail-poetry project this month, and thought I would share some of the little poems I am sending away. Some of the poems refer to images on the cards, so at the bottom of the poem, I have included a note about what was on the front of the card. I have written to the first 9 people, even though it's not yet August 9th to allow for international deliveries.

Happy August!
love, Cathleen

August 1:

Dear Susan--

And then, looking backward--
the swallow circled
and dipped--
intrusion of memory;
a desire for connection--
What would you have said
if I had told you?
how you would have laughed--

(image: a ruin in Rome)

August 2:

Dear DD--

Every time I look away,
a new detail emerges--
my vision transformed
by solitude--
come now, then
wait--------

(image: Walking on Eggshells by Sandy Skoglund)

August 3:

Dear Michelle--

The way language leaves you--
the way a bell can clear the air--
we were at the window
talking--the heaviness
of the air, of philosophy--
we, now silent--

(image: church bells outside a window)

August 4:

Dear Amanda--

the shifting quality of light--
today, an eclipse
maybe you have seen it?
sky becoming the color
of clouds--

(front: Jean Cocteau quote)

August 5:

Dear Gregory--

Today, dreaming of snow,
cold chilling bones--
the paths of mountains,
hum of crystals landing
one atop another--
the shape of breath
circles--and we sing--

(image: Untitled (Jesus and I) by Larry Johnson)

August 6:

Dear Susan--

Intricate petals on tomato
blossoms--butterfly slowly
moving its wings (open/
close)--sudden rain
on skin--sun baking
the soil dry--

(image: ornamental kale)

August 7:

Dear Bethany--

What intangible costs,
what lives destroyed--
by this, our greed,
our fear--

the electric aggression in
the air when a man walks by
and says "I could/should have shot
you--"

(image: poster "War IS Terror")

August 8:

Dear Robert--

the ways we
fall apart (or) fall together--
moments of unravelling
(when) our breath sighs
out of us--
walls permeable,
hearts softened--

(image: house falling in)

August 9:

Dear Nancy--

Just now--a seed drops from
the sky onto my plate--
I wonder what is planted
here, what fertile ground
I will become when I eat it--
flowers or vines sprouting
from my intestines, reaching
toward light--

(image: Josephine Baker taking a bath)