Shana Ritter’s poetry and short stories have appeared in various journals and magazines including Lilith, Fifth Wednesday, and Georgetown Review. Her chapbook Stairs of Separation was published by Finishing Line Press. In the Time of Leaving, a novel of exile and resilience, is set in late 15th-century Spain and was published in 2019. Shana has been awarded the Indiana Individual Artist Grant on multiple occasions.

Welcome to the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Shana, what poems have you brought for us today?

In these New Times

The flowers are just beginning to open
hyacinth, daffodil, tulip, iris, peony.

I can no longer count the hours by your movements
the bridges between what was and what is are closed.

We have not chosen this, we are only weavers of chords
we must retool all the looms, spinning as we mark

the living. Remember work is not what we earn but
what we do. Gibran said it best, “Work is love made visible.”

The arc of our days shift, we stitch each one anew
someday the rocks we are moving will form a wall

and shelter us all if we are willing.


Mapping

There is the whole of something
and the line surrounding it
there is the depth and the curve
and the bend that turns the
curve into an angle not unlike
an elbow tilted precariously
everything appears to have shifted
but it never changes what it is.
There is the whole of something
and then there is the whole of some
thing and that thing is immutable.
Like a map draped over a table

the rectangle changed to a square
yet the map remains a map
and it is the world. The edges cause
waters and lands to spill into space
others come sharply into view
but the distance between Rio
and Antarctica remains the same.
The distance between Reykjavik
and Puerto de Plata is still
the same. Each kilometer
every mile along longitudes and latitudes
measures as it has always measured.

Even as the crease of the map creates
a permanent line along the shore of Australia
the Great Barrier Reef falling away and the clouds
of fish seeking depths and hollows to hide in.
The Arctic Circle has disappeared beyond
the other edge as the last group of narwhales
make their way through rising seas and falling ice
past the calving glaciers and the stars falling
into the brief spaces between light and light.
Near the center of this splayed map the Atlantic
currents troughs and channels cross and cross
lines of souls fracture the deeps. One woman

rowed her way alone by day and alone by night
she almost turned to salt. Islands break the blue
in the south of the great Pacific between rifts of water
where waves remember the curve of huge logs
hollowed the break of oars voices chanting
when the seas were still sung to.
water stays water, salt stays salt
even as the debris accumulate
even as the depths slip and rise
and tides reach ocean remains ocean
what changes are the curving lines
the cliffs once risen against the shores.

 
the tides of my heart

are held by rippling shoals
shallow, sharp they block the passage.

water rises in the rain soaked earth.
I am held, a tree bent toward light.

In the cold I am drawn to fire
in the heat pulled toward ice

here in this landlocked place
the spring fed pond draws me
to its depths.

At night I leave the windows opened wide
let what will enter, enter
let what will fly away, rise.


You've been listening to the poetry of Shana Ritter on the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.