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Penelope Schott
AS IF TO BELIEVE IN PRAYER
Explore more of Penelope Schott’s work by downloading her new PDF pamphlet
OLD BARN, OR HOW THINGS GO ON available now from O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press.
As if to believe it could work,
that someone is listening,
that it differs from wishing,
as if to believe
the coyotes on the hill
are calling for you
as you stand at the midnight window
watching the stars for long enough
that the stars move,
as you lean west with the planet
that carries the ashes or bones of those
who loved you before you were born
it’s like the heavy saucepan in your kitchen
where your dead grandmother made soup
with lentils, celery, ham bone, prayer,
and while you are tasting the soup,
a small gray bird is rattling the feeder
chirping Now, Now,
the permanent Now
you have entered briefly, that Now
from which you know you will depart.
About the writer:
PENELOPE SCAMBLY SCHOTT’s work has been published in Adanna, American Poetry Review, CALYX, Cider Press Review, Connecticut River Review, Evening Street Review, Georgia Review, Gyroscope, Miramar Magazine, Panoply, Passager Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Rat’s Ass Review, The Raven’s Perch, and others. She is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. The author of twenty poetry books, her most recent include On Dufur Hill (Turning Point Publishers), Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman (The Poetry Box), and Waving Fly Swatters at Angels (Turning Point Publishers). She lives in the small (pop.: 632) wheat-growing town of Dufur, Oregon.
Image: High Mass at a Fishing Village on the Zuyder Zee by George Clausen (1852-1944). Oil on canvas. 18.1 x 14.1 inches. Public domain.
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