Dawn’s Sheen | Rebecca Walter
*published in Murfreesboro 2021 Calendar
my first published work
I trace a photo with my calloused thumb.
Cup in hand, I wiggle my toes; I tune,
a turn from hymn’s hollow aluminum.
The sting of nettle outside while we hum—
Crickets ring along orchards. We croon
as the fading rain shakes what’s dim, wakes numb
with our why's and when's unlipped. We are flung-—
& do echoes still toss from strangers who
wonder If we're growth? If we're hum?
We’ll say, in those branches our hammock hung
------- & to us beckoned the sallow-voiced loon—
here’s to this wild place, the hammock we spun
under branches’ umbrellas. Past, unsummed—
we had wings, we had our own waning moons.
Cool perimeter wafts—I’ll be undone
by nightcrawlers, coffee & you. Alone
sipping honesty, sweetly overgrown,
why do I open this now empty room?
I bite my thumb. We were meadow—sun’s drum.
I wrote a series of sonnets a couple summers ago, inspired by work on the farm. Those 10-12 hour days meant we oft’ spoke with our bygone—— to keep the work song up from sunrise to sunset.
Inspired by okra pods, tomato tar, sweat bee stings:
OUR COMMITMENT TO SLIME
-for Tony Bourdain, in Space
I sassed permission——thistle & prickle
You & some vessel——golden with yoke
Fresh palate——woah, effulgent bell’s tickle
long after the day itches to joke
You need what you need when you fall
Some color some blossom! Last night
from body to body & through tendrilled thrawl
This morning, too, another light. Who’ll taste a bite?
Did you twist just because sense of place falls?
You’re in my ear: We’ll eat what we catch!
I’m catching up so best not to fall
while requesting a scratch
From you—— Sting—— You found me again
while caught in this skin.
this poem is “duplex” form by Jericho Brown: sonnet + ghazal..also a blues song. I left all 4 working titles to showcase the difficulty in simplifying this into song. this is my first song. recited for “Write With Pride” (of Southern Word). read slowly; use heart-breath.
Late February has me missing friends & anxiously awaiting season’s change, like a gate about to open. I wanted to try a new form for Poetry in the Boro, & a ghazal for cazzle just hit. This is for all my friends, to fly through the time & space between us.
I wrote this for Bloom Stage in collaboration with Poetry in the Boro on December 16, 2021. Audience joins on the last 2 words.
DAILY PROMPT, Feb 7:
Have a female character accept a ride from a man whom she doesn’t know well, where he questions her about her mother, & where an unexpected delay occurs.
**(This was tricky for me, on & off the page. It’s new, (since grade-school) to be this imaginative on paper. New is always a challenge. Here goes:
DIAMOND TRANSMISSION
Signs hop on our windshield (as rain) to pull over before we see stars, then split the meal we packed. No sense hauling through this storm.
We each write & wander some in our rain suits & take turns changing. Warm & slightly buzzed, he pulls a prism from his pocket & gazes at me through it; tells me I look kinda funky. Probably because I was lost making wishes—
Tonight, I needn’t wish for more. Our dinner is life-affirmation. Chips, sandwiches, dessert, (from the spot) nabbed before we left. I trust him because my friend trusts him, & he respects a meal.
We eat beside a cove, wind in our favor; I squeal noticing this & unwrap a cookie. After dessert, we try our luck; tires spin. We are going to be stuck all night. Fine. Through the window, waves roll against this short shore as the sun sets & we soak in the thick air.
Our friend introduced us for this road-trip home. With nothing pressing to do until the mud dries by morning (off some forest road) he plays a few of the hits where we match musically.
After an hour more, with a backdrop of laughter he tells me he’d long forgotten to call his mother & asks about mine. I say, she is life-long, the kind of sweet well-fedness that lasts.
Wind, we acknowledge, has gentled. So, we walk & smoke & dance around puddles. The crows wait outside while we walk in the mud like folks wandering (no cars, soft landing). I want my current relationships strong & deep because I’ve fallen (with vigor) & have had little flight lately. My heart beats slow; I’m not seeking confirmation.
We ponder fluff around stones. Is it too much to ask for one to declare one’s hidden mind is on paradise, & is it too much to admit the other’s on home? When do we have time to build into this reality without changing its premise? We pack in for the night.
I answer, You Better Be Lightning, when he asks what I’m reading. In the window he looks like obscure tentacles reaching when he scratches his ear. “Your story is your compass & your compass is broken?” He asks me if he heard me correctly, while he searches for the water straw. “Well you’ll just have to acquire a new one!” he decides.
“Mm,” I say.
He responds, “If tonight you have dreams, you’ll tell me in the morning?”
My first decent poem, ever, I think. Written in ode to H. Murakami, for my own birthday as a place of solace in the storm, March, 2020. 
^^As an exercise in form poetry I a wrote 3-week series of sonnets. This one turned out okay. It’s day 5 of the practice, written July 21, 2021
I revisit this early poem two years later as the first bookend before the world as many of us knew it, shut down. Oh what vitality to travel, to crash. Pandemic & Poetry will forever be linked for me—I began seriously writing poetry in Jan 2020, & by March 2020 the covid virus dismantled our lives. Well, the rest is herstory (or poetry), as they say. More soon.
For DREAM GEOGRAPHIES | painting by SHONDELL MCFALL
*This poem was written for Robin's dream & featured in DREAM GEOGRAPHIES as part of Amie Whittemore's arts collaborative. 