Facts About the Author

A Few Days After the Equinox

You prepare for the first freeze
and what you cannot save.
Persephone returned, the chill
back in her bones. Eurydice did not.

You travel across oceans,
to Bali and Istanbul, waves
of faces you haven’t met.

In the markets, baskets
of spice, fruit with names
that feel strange in your mouth.

At home, you watch your garden
grow dingy in its dirt,
withered at the season’s end.

This is where you close
the door, light the stove
while the moon teases outside.

In photographs you keep
those you have lost, memories
tilled in better stretches,
grown against the frost.

The winter wind will bring
too much of the past
to tend. But plant a cold-weather
harvest—carrots and kale.
Sow a little light for later.

From: Joannie Stangeland (joannieks@msn.com)
Sent: Fri 12/14/07 12:51 AM
To: llgg2@hotmail.com

Facts About the Author

born in Paterson ...would have died in Totowa ...used to live in Queens ...now in the Hudson Valley.

The Paterson Falls, 1959

My Refrigerator, 1984

My Grandmother, Great Grandmother & Great Great Grandmother (with Uncle Ralph) Compobasso, Italy 1906.

My TV Set, 1994

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