On Earth
Outside
my window
the apple tree resurrects herself—
leaves, light of April, her forgotten
eyes
full of regret—but
how does one go about dying gracefully?
The world is filled with people
who have not died.
Once
I stood on a northern sharp corner,
moonlit mountains intersect
winter, blue clouds painted by desperate
wolves
proving their existence
and desires by howling through darkness.
Here in my room, I question
existence before extinction.
Touch me, says Andris.
Touch me. —A
former art professor remarked that the
sketchbooks of Clarissa Jakobsens,
Aurora, Ohio, looked more like poetry
than paintings, an observation that
accurately predicted her midlife
direction. Finally, years of teaching and
parenting have led Clarissa back to
poetry classes at Kent State University
and reading at Shakespeare and Company,
in Paris. A reader throughout northern
Ohio and poetry editor of the Arsenic
Lobster, she won first place in the
Akron Art Museum 2005 New Word
Competition.
Walking
Backward
—Look
as long as you can at the friend you
love,
no matter whether that friend is moving
away from you
or coming back toward you.—Rumi
We walk along crumbling blacktop
the afternoon sun shyly layers my rugby
tee.
Three geese straddle Sunny Lake
awkwardly letting go of everything
they waddle on new ice.
Last Sunday, father and son slid the
hill.
Today this slope is painted brown.
Birds know the first day of March,
they chatter about wind spreading
winter news from tree to tree.
Blackened snow promises
luscious emeralds. My daughter’s
pace
quickens, walking backward in front of me
I follow with desire.
—Clarissa Jakobsens
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