April Showers Bring Our Annual Poetry Party: We Welcome Laura Davies Foley

Yes, this week is focused on mysteries at Kingdom Books -- but poetry is always at the heart of things too, and we're planning our annual Poetry Party for Saturday April 18 at 11 a.m. Come meet Laura Davies Foley of Cornish, NH, and April Ossmann, now of Vermont but with a long residence at Alice James Books; April will introduce Laura and catch up on connections with poets attending (she's teaching poets quite often!).

For a taste of Laura Davies Foley's work, visit her web site, www.LauraDaviesFoley.com, where there are poems from both of her collections. I especially like SYRINGA, with its vivid portrayals of scene and emotions around a wounded bird. Here's the title poem:

Syringa

I thought I would see a flutter of feathers,
a streak of blood,
maybe some bones.
The fox in the night would be satisfied,
or the hawk, or the eagle, and I would lean against a tree,
and I would feel the loss, the empty space.
Instead, she greets me from a spot far off on the lake.
She stretches out her broken wing
as if to question my intention,
my coming, my watching.
Her body shines in the copper light.

It is difficult for both of us,
the endless floating in dark water,
the waiting eyes,
the pale, cold sky
and ice.
Every day the clutching branches of ice.

And I have come to love her. It is difficult,
the ice like lace, the glow of her neck
as she arches back upon herself,
the desolation of the sky, and joy,
the wild joy that blossoms toward us in the dark.