The Statue of Liberty
The second time I saw you,
I looked on your crown from the porthole
of a plane, but I saw you first in a picture book
from the American Library that rolled
into our Black Forest town once a month.
This time I was on top of the world,
a bride with a new name, a new country,
a town in Tennessee.
Gold bells of Carolina Jessamine
scent the antebellum stairs of the tennis club
A dinner for volunteers,
we crunch the green salad,
nuzzle wine on the terrace.
Spring in February quivers,
throws a range of voices around us
like a warming cloak.
Continue reading Stars Shine on Everyone – Helga Kidder
Winter wind whines through woods,
whips and tosses flakes around tree trunks
like refugees begging for shelter.
Where can they go except to fall
into the ground or sink
and drown in a foreign sea?
. . . and in its shadow
we know one another
~ W. S. Merwin “The Rock”
Married one week, mid-air between
continents, hunger for anything new
quivered inside me like a leaf, unfurling.
The sky February blue.
Behind me a Black Forest village,
mother, and nosy neighbors.
In front of me a town in Tennessee
full of strangers speaking
in a strange language.
Continue reading FIRST FLIGHT – by Helga Kidder
