WINTER’S ALOE

is the sun,
it burns off the tops of trees,
and the points of snow that cast light
over the branches

I like to walk between the torsos
of oak, before the colors lift
their ruddy spirits from skin of leaf

wait for the sky to shed
itself into the face of a different bird

Do you ever long for mid-summer,
a backwater pond slumped over
from weeds, as evening
enters slowly then snaps shut?
I want to walk instead,
over a sea of glass,
so still in its reflection,
that you forget where you are,
and it breathes for you.

kathleen vibbert 2009

SHADOWFALL

A man once spoke the way a yellow sky rolls back.
Often our laughter would echo,
pull us along
into rows we needed to walk through
as if the journey could somehow surpass our steps:
We walked past white houses, 
retaining walls, windows with azure curtains
 and deep cherry wood sills. Books opened 
during October, yellowed, never read,

All the possibilities that once felt like gnarled 
shoulders began to embrace us. 
His palms now wrinkled from prayers, once responded to mine. 
Perhaps he walks an island, shanked against the green, 
where even the rain is unable to open his arthritic hands, unaware that he
still wanders through me, though silent on cloudy days,
crust of his beard, a shadow overcast.

KATHLEEN VIBBERT 2009

Paper Tree

Its roots are the roots I have come to know.
Gray sheet of graphic paper,
purple branches gesture to the stars but not for light.
A tree that wants to live outside these margins.
It will yellow as other trees do,
but differently. 
No autumn gold left behind.
Only itself, folded inside the corners of a book.
Its color turned again and again.

kathleen vibbert 2009

Credits and Publications

Upcoming:
Two poems to be included in Chickenpinata,
a journal of poetry,
4th issue October, 2009.

Breadcrumb. Scabs, A Poetry Magazine, 9th issue.
Third Anthology : MEOW, pub. by Jeff Winke,

October 2005, IBPC HR, Judge David Hernandez
March, 2007 IBPC HR, Judge Pascale Petit
October 2007, IBPC HR Judge Ethelbert Miller
March 2008, IBPC HR, Judge Fieda Brown
Oak Bend Review, April 2009,
Rust and Moth Literary Journal, Spring, 2009,

Anthologies:

Women Celebrating Women “Remembering Faces”
The first two books in the series were Common Intuitions(2005)
and
The Woman in the Mirror (2004) sold
out within a week of the reading and is currently out of print.

Muscadine Lines, A Southern Anthology
by Kathy Hardy Rhodes (Editor)
“In this book the talents of many stand as the product of one.”
—Jackie K. Cooper

Muscadine Lines is a COLLECTION of short fiction, personal essays, and poems. Muscadine Lines offers readers the joy of discovering the treasures of promising new voices, as well as seasoned veterans.

This book is a gathering of stories and poems that epitomize the qualities readers treasure in the best Southern literature—a rich appreciation of language and humor, as well as a dead-on sense of place and character. These storytellers let their ideas, experiences, and imaginations flow from their minds to the lines, as they tell of worlds that are fictionally unique, yet realistically akin to our own.
available through Barnes and Nobles and Amazon.com

Remembering Faces (Palettes and Quills Press)
available through mail, and also email: psnquill@rochester.rr.com

Previous credits incude:

Chapbook “Past the River” D-N Publishing,
White Chimney, London,
Tipton Poetry Journal,
The Shine Journal,
Falling Star Magazine,
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Spring 2006.
Connections-A Quarterly Environmental Journal based in New Hampshire,
Spillway Review,
Facets, a Literary Magazine,
Red River Review,
Autumn Sky Poetry,
Softblow Poetry Journal, Cyril Wong, Editor
Pocket Change, Poetry and Art Journal,
The Electric Acorn, #14,
Pachamama Press,
Tonopah: A Quarterly Journal of Prose and Poetry,
Lily, A Monthly Online Literary Review,
Muscadine Lines, A Southern Journal,
Moondance Journal, Celebrating Creative Women,
Just West of Athens,
Metromania Magazine,

STEPHANIE

Thanks IBPC for the Honorable Mention, July, 2009 for Stephanie and to Judge George Szirtes whose insight into the poem will be a considerable help in future work.

Pelican of the Wilderness

You’re all that’s left, peripherally,
in a place where no one else recognizes you. 
in between the halo colors that wave,
my eyes still moist from the blood that redeems,
you’re the vision that dries around my brow.
And as I look up, you’re all I need to see.
A pelican of the wilderness:
who holds the floodwaters inside his beak,
the river inside his belly,
the nervous laughter from the tide.

Inspired by one of my favorite Bible verses:
Psalm 102:6
I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert.

We Found Her

Do you remember being lost as a child and hearing
someone say we found her!
Do you remember the excitement
in that voice that you instantly try to identify. A voice that maybe
you’d heard many times but never paid any attention to. It could be a memory from being five or six and hidden inside the coat racks at the local department store. Or, it could be as recent as missing an appointment for a job interview
because you can no longer read the street signs from a great distance.
You want a voice. Now, its the GPS, or the radio, maybe a familiar song that allows you to think in a more secure and steady manner until you figure out your own destination.
I think as wonderful as silence is, there’s a time when we have to hear that voice! We found her! Because you know at the end of the voice
someone is going to be happy to see you. They’ll be a smile. Probably nothing negative for all of five minutes, anyway. It could be someone has been looking for your presence in their lives for a really long time.
Without you even knowing it. And if they haven’t, then you’re right where you need to be. Listening to your own voice, that gentle tug underneath your tongue that you need to know.

PIRATE IN AN EMPTY HOUSE

The house we sold now sits and waits
for early autumn rain;
a pirate with a tooth of metal
languishes in pain.

Its haunted, so the townfolk say
but I cannot believe.
Those rooms, those silver photographs
the drapery’s spotted sleeve.

So hard to close the door and walk
away on cobblestone.
Oh pirate, if you’re hungry, mate
its best you live alone.

kathleen vibbert 2000

BEE IN ANAPEST

If the bee is my friend in the spring,
then his genius falls weathered in rain.
He will open the flowers and bring
every color alive once again.

From his labors I fare and applaud,
how his focus and drive see him through.
There’s perfection from everything flawed
when he comes and he knows what to do.

In late summer he fades off and leaves,
like a bird on a knotty old hill.
But a part of me always believes
he’s the sound of the faraway trill.

kathleen vibbert
written way back in 2004 I believe
when I did a lot of scansion.

Forward with Hester

I learn something from every person who enters my life,
leaves my life and remains in my life. Something
about them remains with me. This is especially noted
for those who make a lasting impression on me,
those I felt strongly about. Years ago, about thirty-two
to be exact, I met a woman named Hester. She was a mother figure
to me in some ways. I won’t go into the backstory but I only visited
her twice. I’m sure by now, she’s passed away; our family
lost touch with her and the two visits that I had (in her home)
are only a memory with a few photographs to sustain them.

In her home were many projects, some not completed, but many
half-done and some finished. She was always busy. One day she
said to me — that to be happy, to find joy, one must always
have something to look forward to.

Through the years I admit that I have not really wanted to know if she
had indeed passed on, (although if not, she would be well into her nineties)
because I wanted to keep some part of her alive. But that sentence she said to me has become to mean more and more
to me as I approach sixty.

Something to look forward to. Don’t we all want that? But what are we looking
forward to? Many people don’t have a lot to fill in that blank with. Or they only
have a dream to look forward to, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Or the things that they look forward to are negative things, foreclosure, ill health, bad reports and so forth.

When I have a down time, or feel as if writing isn’t what I’ve been called
to do at all, I ask myself what it is that I want to look forward to? Because
Hester was telling me that not only do we need something to look forward to,
but that it should be something we desire.
That’s why she said to be happy….

That’s what I want. To desire, to look forward to, and to anticipate so strongly
this hope, that each day with no matter how much it brings to deal with, I can remember her,
and keep her alive and really look forward, always.

Hester: for you:

2Timonthy 3:6

6 As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. 8 And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.