Letters to the Tempest

A portfolio by Mary V. Jordan

Write to the Point 2021

Persona Poem

A gentle breeze caresses me
like the loving stroke of a hand,
wind tracing my skin 
like invisible fingertips.
I take in the summer sunlight,
basking in its radiance,
warm rays casting a green glow
in my wake.
I twirl along in a finite waltz
with my sisters, as we cling
to this branch that bears us,
not knowing the day we let go,
we live this moment
before time carries us away.

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Yellow Rose and Solomon's Seal

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The gentle breeze sweeps through my lonely garden,
Oak leaves sway in their canopies, twisting,
and few break their grasp, and drift towards the 
ground, locked in a fervent twirl
until they touch the soft moss below,
dotted with beads of morning dew.

We are no longer oak leaves who dance
together on the same branch.
I fear I drift away from you, to rejoin the earth
we were dancing above all this time,
as we ran through thick meadows of yellow and white,
without a thought for what was to become of us.

Now I feel time moving around me,
I feel the change in the air just before rain,
the crispness of a storm yet to come.
The wind runs through the beds of iris and roses,
and as this garden begins its waltz again,
under the graying, hazy sky,
I mourn.

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Reflection

The pond is quiet but for the sound
of water gently trickling down the creek
into the reeds and grasses around the edge,
raindrops patter against its pristine surface,
creating subtle ripples
that cross the silver waters

I see a face staring back at me
through the sheen
its eyes are sullen and gray
hair tangled in messy, broken mats
skin bruised and ghostly pale
and within it, I recognize a piece of myself.

I see its lips part,
it mouths something to me
but its words are carried away
by the ripples across the water,
and only silence remains.

I reach out,
and feel my fingertips barely graze
the cool silver water,
but the undulation my touch brings
shatters this visage.
I see it fade back beneath the surface,
to join the current from which it came,
and no reflection takes its place.

Washed Away

A lone bee latches onto a cornflower's stem,
disoriented by a benign bombardment
that paints the garden with grey,
leaving even the widest of leaves trembling.

The wind sweeps the cold, lashing rain
into surges that choke out the beams of sunlight
that the zinnias yearned for
as they stretched towards the sky.

A deafening drum fills the air,
once permeated by the thrum of her sisters
and their clumsy pirouette informed by
a millennia of their quiet machinations.

Now, their toils are abandoned,
the lilies left waiting for their diligent company,
but all that answers is the downpour,
as their pollen is washed away.

Her fuzz is slick with rainwater,
it clings to her gossamer wings,
binding her like thick tar
even as she attempts to beat it away.

She buries her face in the crook of a leaf's stem,
but the rain persists mercilessly, defying desperation,
inching into the crevices of the earth,
nourishing the soil, but stranding the bee.

A Final Cry

Sheets of icy rain
lash at my skin like knives,
running down the goosebumps
and slicing along my arms.

The deafening wind roars and bellows
with a beast-like fury,
the long grass bending
as it heeds its command.

The landscape itself sways
with a growing trepidation,
Oak leaves ripped from their branches, 
taken by the vicious winds