Spirit Chime
(listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener)
Child of xylophone and wind chime.
Three notes are enough.
Diminished seventh with all bars struck.
Divinity even one note at a time.
Easy to carry;
Resembling a toy.
It can focus a room’s
attention between pure pitch and
sustained harmonic waiver.
You will hear it long after
it stops vibrating.
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Smoke
(listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener)
My six-dot-celled pages
turn to seasons
as I inhale
this end-September dusk suddenly
gone acrid or active
with someone else’s celebration
of an end or a beginning.
This morning was all I could easily wish for—
nowhere to go; no one to be
in undemanding air.
I bankrolled bright balcony sun.
What is despair? What is inertia?
Soon, the mystery of dark will take control
as a change in sound and temperature.
And I will reach into 63,
the age my mother died.
But I have preferable addictions without smoke.
So many hands have left in favor of legacy.
It’s hard to breathe
yet I don’t leave
my mesh rocker and Brailled-filled notebook
aligned between window and wall.
My hands will matter
if they’ve mattered to you.
We all doubt our claim.
We all doubt our magic.
“Not all change is bad,” I write.
And hear flatness of synthetic speech.
“Knives, clocks, wings.” I grasp
images from a list. I gasp
as the near but unknown feast, fabric, fortune or faith
cooks or becomes ashes.
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About the Author
Nancy Scott’s over 925 essays and poems have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and as audio commentaries. Her latest chapbook appears on Amazon, The Almost Abecedarian. She won First Prize in the 2009 International Onkyo Braille Essay Contest. Recent work appears in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Braille Forum, Chrysanthemum, Kaleidoscope, One Sentence Poems, Shark Reef, Wordgathering, and The Mighty, which regularly publishes to Yahoo News.