Twila Newey

2 poems

Map

In this world a hand
            is skin stretched over bone
                        & strings over the rib cage of a cello
                                    play a melody––wing & air
                                   
                                    Water is a song. Rivers are rivers
                                                & the cambia of trees.             
                                                            Veins of various animals run             
                                                                        toward dissolution & birth.                                        
 
                                                                        Fish are fish & mammals
                                                                                    that once grew legs but wandered                  
                                                                                                back to water. That is a whale.
                                                                                                            A whale is whole world.
 
                                                                                                But most of this world
                                                                                    is made of space. Here
                                                                        is what you cannot see           
                                                            neither light nor dark & both                          

                       
                                                touch them, as soft as nothing
                                    but give. That is to yield
                        to a world where the heart
            is an idea as much as a muscle
                                   
& various birds in flight. & sometimes
            a doe—very still & looking.   
                        That is quiet. Have you heard
                                    namelessness harmonize with wind?                          
 
                                                That is a self. In this world
                                                            it comes & goes as bells sounding
                                                                        time & place are very near
                                                                                    & very far away.

 

ode to penelope

& after rain

an archipelago              

                                                                                                of cloud light                            

                        & shadow forever                                

            conspire in grass                                              

                                                            a breeze moves—                                                         

cool, tender                                                                              

earth & moss renewed                                                

                        by water bloom                                  

            in cracks of pavement

hills grow              

            green epochs                    

over ancient rock                              

                                                 epics harden                        

            possibility holds       

still as a woman     

                                                                                    in her house

weaves sky     

                                    all day                   

                                                                                                            I see her                                  

ocean her                                             

warp & weft                                                                            

moon’s changeling                                          
                        shape as she           

                                                                                                 unweaves
a world                                               

                                                                        opens

 

Twila Newey holds an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University. She lives and works at the confluence of poetry, visual art, local ecology, motherhood, and the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in Northern California. You can find recent work at Green Mountains Review, About Place Journal, and Radar Poetry.