READ A POEM
by Clarissa Jakobsons
Quiet as a Star
Horseshoe Pavilion, Shaker Lakes 2006
— for Daniel Thompson (1935-2004)
Day-old bread blankets wooden picnic tables.
The saints pray for more bleach, silver coins
for clean pockets. A young collie searches
for fallen morsels stretching hind legs in prayer.
Three mighty blue heron spread their wings
shadows flap a fleet of jets. Listen to our offerings,
poetic tears mix with Daniel Thompson’s honey.
Major Ragain says, Pay attention to the rise
and fall of the chest...
Where is breath before we breathe?
Shoeless in the dark, we taste the honey
slicing dreams with a knife, sprinkling
breadcrumbs into nocturnal farewells.
I find a coin under the bench.
Someone is listening here in my garden
Quiet as a star.
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“Quiet as a Star” by Clarissa Jakobsons. © Clarissa Jakobsons. 2017. Used by permission of the author.
ABOUT TODAY’S POET
Clarissa Jakobsons instructs at Cuyahoga Community College and was twice a featured poet at Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. She also won first place at the Akron Art Museum New Words Competition. She has published in many journals, including Glint Literary Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, Lake, Ruminate, Tower Magazine and Qarrtsiluni. Sometimes Jakobsons combines artist books with her poems and artwork. Recently she enjoyed a Fine Arts Work Center residency in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She writes, “Don’t be surprised to see my inner artist kicking sandcastles, climbing Mount Diablo, painting Provincetown dunes, or walking under an Ohio crescent moon.”
WRITE A POEM
Write a poem about a geometric shape in the form of the shape itself. Circles, squares and rectangles are all fair game, but consider too a rhomboid, parallelogram, isosceles triangle, obtuse triangle, trapezoid or octagon.