Roy & Kirby – May 2024

Angela Kirby and Lorraine Roy traded art and words. Lorraine shared this piece, titled “ICEBERG 7,” with Angela:

In response, Angela wrote this poem:

Iceberg

On good days when light doesn’t give up
just after rising, feet hit the floor, sink
taproot deep, anchoring me on my island
in this wide ocean life: all day I lean,
scrub clinging to headland, salt-stunted
wind-bent, waving questions for leaves

this blink that I am, how 
       will it matter
                                     is water isolation 
                                        or can I swim
                do fish count
                   as family

No one tells you how to live on an iceberg,
there’s no book of days for waking frozen 
on your knees, let the gull gods come 
rip prayer flags from skin: what if
under the rock where I was planted, under
coin-flat sky, under these waves, what if 

I am blue
                                            I am beautiful
                I am deep

* * * * *

Angela shared this poem with Lorraine:

Accidental 

Out of the blue
rain’s unexpected, 
these first fat drops 
evangelists for wetness 
when you were thinking 
lovely day, thinking take 
a walk and maybe here
I finally belong 

The accidental, unsure
of itself, wonders if 
it should be happening; 
you wonder the same,
think a scar’s not a scar
when it’s accidental: might as well
get mad at this rain

You never know what’s
coming right at you, like
the short shower of worms 
from a Dundee sky 
or mackerel dropped on 
an empty playground
somewhere in Iowa

Might as well 
stand open-mouthed
waiting for thunder, 
ride a horse through a forest
sliced to ribbons by light,
turn what you think you know 
to a slick fish dream
falling from bluest sky

In response, Lorraine made this artwork, titled “Accidental”: