Poetry Breakfast

For Jill Clayburgh, In Memoriam
By Diane Elayne Dees

The image we will always remember:
You, swirling and spinning
throught the streets of New York,
becoming the blue and yellow and orange.
You looked excited, not afraid, not caring
that strangers gawked at you. You learned
to move with the wind, to stay grounded
while fate turned you round and round.
At one with the blue and yellow and orange,
at one with the streak of fiery red,
standing straight and filled with awe,
you let yourself be carried by art, by wind.

Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane lives in Louisiana. She publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women’s professional tennis.

The Grief of Atalanta
(For Kris N.)
By Diane Elayne Dees

Daughter of hunters,
Atalanta knows survival.
Daughter of bears,
Atalanta knows hibernation.
Daughter of man and woman,
Atalanta knows expectations.
Sister of many,
Atlanta knows abandonment.

Born to run, raised to fight,
Atalanta longs for winter,
a time to flee the race, the hunt,
even the golden apples.
She must make her own winter,
find her own cave, even in
the middle of the race.

The warrior always feels alone,
for those for whom she fights
stay far behind, not aware
that there is a war, much less
that they are losing it.

Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane lives in Louisiana. She publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women’s professional tennis.

The Recital
By Diane Elayne Dees

You danced on the patio, bending to shadows
sprawled on the lawn by apple trees
gleaming gold in the New England dusk.
The second movement of The New World
Symphony coaxed Duncanesque grace
from your strong legs, and I watched
your lover watch you. Her sadness
covered the orchard like fallen red leaves,
and I had to turn away from my own joy.
The next morning, I strolled down
the deserted Massachusetts highway
and, without benefit of map or directions,
crossed the invisible line into New Hampshire,
not knowing whether I could ever go back.

Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane lives in Louisiana. She publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women’s professional tennis.

Wearing Thin
By Diane Elayne Dees

Endless Contract Negotiations Wearing Thin on Drew Brees
Front page headline, New Orleans Times-Picayune

Endless crime wears thin on residents and tourists.
The man shot dead while holding his baby outside
the Bayou Boogaloo was only twenty-one;
he fell in front of his mother, who will soon enough
be worn from grief and trauma. The paint on abandoned
Ninth Ward houses has worn very thin,
the neighborhood dredged to within an inch
of its life, its foundation unable to absorb
the overflow of rivers of abandonment.
The Saints are hardly martyrs, but are made so
by masses of starving believers. They wait,
with eyes toward heaven, while Drew Brees is worn thin.

Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane lives in Louisiana. She publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women’s professional tennis.