READ A POEM
by Elise Geither
Unkempt Sky
The light
on the wall holds
all I know of this life.
The scents of my home
even
are no longer mine.
I cannot see:
The fields where my brothers tended their goats.
The tents where my mothers cooked, gave birth, wove.
The sky of my father covering our lands.
I dream of home, the babies,
the rough cloth in bright greens, reds, and blues.
A yellow scarf held my hair
from going astray.
Oh father, oh sky,
the myrrh and amber
remind me that,
like a bird,
I am not alone.
I am the smoke that rises
to meet some unkempt sky.
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“Unkempt Sky,” by Elise Geither. © Elise Geither, 2017. Used by permission of the author.
ABOUT TODAY’S POET
Elise Geither, PhD, has been teaching for more than 20 years. Her plays have received production around the country, and her short play,
The Stone, was a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poems have appeared in publications that include
The Artful Dodge and
Morpo. Her chapbooks from Crisis Chronicles and Nightballet Press are available, along with her academic book on supporting students on the autism spectrum in academic writing.
WRITE A POEM
The journal
3 Elements Review publishes poems integrating three disparate terms that the editors assign.
Try composing a poem on one of these past assignments: husk-echo-quell, tandem bicycle-ache-procession or glaze-thread-murmur.