"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin

Patsy Rahn’s poetry and prose is published in various journals and anthologies. Her book, The Grainy Wet Soul, is available from bookstores online. In 2021, she received the People's Choice Award from the 5th Open Eurasion Literary Festival of Festivals. Videos of her readings can be found on her website and You Tube. 

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


the roots of kindness


Kindness, a giving without expecting return
a caring for another without a cause
a moment without thinking
a reaction reaching out
a movement to support, momentarily needed,
a flicker of recognition sparking compassion
an easy gift of love unconditionally given
suddenly you are a comfort provider
in an instant you have saved someone’s day
so small you may not notice,
quietly erasing a bit of anger or hurt
from this world, lightening this life
in a feather light load of unselfishness,
undoing the distance of indifference
undoing the invisibility of another,
you too, become real.
we are full of tiny connections
our unseen roots communicating
below the surface
nurturing one another.


A contemplation of death


I suppose I do not want to disappear,
in death,
extinguished,
a flame blown out,
no memory left of my being here
but a brief whiff of burning wick
a temporary hologram of proof.
If I become another state of energy,
will there be consciousness,
the sense of I
so that I can sense the other?
Or, will I be subsumed into an
infinitness that has no awareness,
no purposefulness,
no necessities.
Or, is it infinitness
as an element that is necessary
for the unforseeable that
may or may not be
the possible or impossible
of yet becoming?


reverie


Well toot toot, flying footing, floating doting, gazing grazing
staring at the window, the back of the bench, the peel of the bark,
the sky, the grass, the paint on the wall

listening to the wind winding around and through
different shapes and sizes, hear flutes and horns,
seeing heaven dancing opening the eye in sky

sunbeam blasting through the stratosphere
to glaze the wheat
flowing with the breeze,
playing the air to beauty

the smell of dirt earth
cows walking the fields
crows gliding on blue, sitting
solidly on brown branches

their black a note on the symphonic score
of sounding bugs and beetles and butterflies,
water rushing, gurgling, chuckling
weaving along mossy banks

the stare of a praying mantis standing
on my chest we eye to eye
and contemplate our togetherness

the woods protecting, providing, teaching
bringing me into its sun and shadow
with open green

the blue above, a lid keeping me in
mothering me, the holy trio of
green below, blue above and we in between.


You've been listening to the poetry of Patsy Rahn on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.