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Salisbury by Christopher clements

"Salisbury" Copyright by Christopher Clements

Darkness in the Light
September 26, 1996

A poem by Lyn Lifshin

this morning the pond
looks like marble. Rose
and charcoal dissolving
to dove, to guava, rouge.
Only mallards pushing
holes in the glass, so
unlike the pond, deep in
trees, almost camouflaged,
startling as coming upon
your reflection in a mirror,
just there under trees and
the wooden bar and the
driftwood benches blackly
jade with pines dripping
into it, shadows close to
my hair. What I didn't have
blinded me so I hardly saw
the small birds, blue,
pulling out of moss and
needles as if reaching into
the dark for their color

Copyright Lyn Lifshin

Lyn Lifshin

Lyn Lifshin, whose book Before It's Light won the Paterson Poetry Award, has written more than 100 books and edited four anthologies of women writers. Her most recent collection is The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian (Texas Review Press, 2005). Godine will publish Another Woman Who Looks Like Me in April 2006. A new collection, Persephone, will be published by Red Hen Press.

Ms. Lifshin's poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the United States, and she has won many awards. She has also taught poetry and prose writing for many years at universities, colleges, and high schools, and has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. She is working on a collection about poets, Poets, (Mostly) Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially the Lies. For more information, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of her work, and more, browse her website: www.lynlifshin.com.

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