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?
Day Light Savings Time
The last two days I have risen to light
but for weeks before I stepped out
into the barely dawn, the dogs’
big paws padding beside me
as we walked the long gravel drive
circling back to the pond’s little shore.
The last two nights I have stepped into shadow
though it is still early evening, hours before
real dark. The dog and I walk towards the field
where the full moon, blue moon, grazes
bared trees the way eyelashes might light on a cheek.
As a child if I found a stray lash, I’d place it on my fingertip
to make a wish, close my eyes draw in my breath, blow.
I don’t remember the wishes, but recall the way belief
held in that weightless gesture. The way I trust my steps
on the path I can’t see, my dog beside me as the world
falls past time, as if changing a clock, changes anything at all.
---------------------------------------
From the dictionary of obscure sorrows
avenoir - n. the desire that memory could flow backward
There is a woman
who rows alone across
the Atlantic day after
day. She faces the waters she left
in order to pull toward the shore
where she is going.
On clear days she turns her head
and twists her torso to look at a line
where blue wavers into gray
she imagines herself arriving
but she must turn backwards
if she is to go forward.
On days when fog sets in
and rain falls, she cannot see at all
she keeps on rowing, trusting
her strong calloused hands
the tendons in her arms taking rest
only briefly in the drift of current.
She pulls and pulls
longing for the lip of shore
for the day she can look back
on the ocean crossed alone.
I minute
---------------------------------------
Branches
we think of lines as straight
but they are not. Not lines, not
the minutes of any hour, not our paths.
Always the turn in the road
a swerve around a fallen limb, a wire
that’s come down from a northwest wind.
Equations appear to lie straight across
the page as if calculations could lead
to an answer, a simple right or wrong.
But there are always more questions
the great dippers handle, the curve
of the earth, the rib cage, my heart.
---------------------------------------
Redemption
In our cupped hands the broken things bone china cup, cobalt blue bowl. We lay the pieces on the oak cutting board, sandpaper, glue. We imagine them whole again.
Threadbare towels are pulled apart for polishing the dulled copper, the tarnished cutlery. Stretched-out sweaters, stained shirts, torn kneed pants, stuffed into bags carted to Goodwill.
Someday I may buy an oval braided rug for the patch of floor at the foot of the bed. Afternoon sun will reveal an old piece of sleeve that once held your arm, the way you once held me.
You've been listening to the poetry of Shana Ritter on the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.
