Solstice
Kathryn Kruger
32 pages, full color cover, price $7.00
ISBN 0-9714003-1-8
"Solstice, my first collection of poems,
constitutes a lyric narrative exploring our
mutual isolation and quest for
connectedness.  Nature offers clues and
sometimes answers but generally guards her
secrets well.

Receiving my BA in Creative Writing at
University of Arizona, I continued my
studies in literature receiving a Ph.D. in
English at University of Miami.  After
teaching courses in poetry studies, creative
writing, environmental writing and world
literature at Lynn University and co-editing
the student poetry journal, Quest, I have
relocated with my husband and two children,
and now reside in Warrenville, Illinois."

- Kathryn
BRAIDING HAIR

Once her hair was too fine
even for my skilled hands.
Now it's a rope thick enough
to raise a sail, hold taut
and tack upon the bay, thick
enough to wind into a basket
or weave into a wreath, so
thick the envious birds with darting
eyes, dream they could twine it
into their nests, thatch together
the twigs, and leave a few soft
strands to cradle the warn shells
of their humming eggs.
This morning, as I knead
the strands into place, and stroke the downy
hairs at her nape--the spot, I've been told,
where our wings attach--I wonder this:
Have I been braiding my daughter's hair
or something wild I've tried to tame?
ZEN MONK WITH TEA-CUP

This is the seed
in which he pours
the day's beginning.

Fired clay, mud dipped in light
in this begging bowl
the hermit seeks awakening.

Beyond the rim a dark pond floats
in which he glimpses
no reflection

like a mind without thought
a sky without moon
without cloud, without star.
If poets and lovers of poetry don't
write, publish, read, and purchase
poetry books then we will have
no say in the quality of our
contemporary culture and no
excuse for the abuses of language,
ideas, truth, beauty, and love
in our cultural life.
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