Penny Walker Bosselmann
Monarchs
April 8, 2002
Here is the cast of characters:
this mysterious sky
like a giant blur hat
pulled over the head
of the earth–
and this field
clear and grandly spacious
a suitable set.
This borrowed jacket,
too big for my body
but rooms to hide these
brightly colored birds
who will enter on cue.
The minor characters:
stands of goldenrod,
bright gold of kings–
tall and waving grass
and crickets and mice.
All cleverly disguised as
themselves–
and thing unseen
like wind waiting (for a cue)–
her entrance.
Now enters:
the main attraction
the cash cow
that which puts even
spaciousness to shame.
Swelling, sparkling, swarming
in this September sun–
orange as pumpkins–
coming in clouds and herds
and millions–
on the brown path
on the goldenrod
in the blue sky.
(And now, the wind’s cue)
Applause!
Do you know what you carry inside?
can you speak it?
Can you rise in the morning
light wearing your own beauty?
more poetry:
The Piccolo
January 25, 2007
I am trying to learn to love people.
This work is like wedging myself
through the eye of a needle.
there are excuses of course,
being first raised as a daisy
and then as a rose and I have learned
how to love both daises and roses.
David has been my primary teacher–
over many years by his loving me.
It is as clear as the smallest church bell
or the ring of a piccolo.
I do love the snow coming down today and the trees,
the gray and orange squirrels now running
in the snow, back and forth, by the wood pile.
And the night coons with their bandit eyes and
the deer who are so beautiful, standing in the
twilight by the feeder, all birds,
yellow Sam, our cat.
These I can see
I am not able to love what I cannot see.
I think there will be a time when loving has nothing to do
with seeing–
Then I feel sure that the music of a bell and
the sweetness of a piccolo, though not seen,
I will love.
I Asked My Husband to Sing to Me
July 10, 2002
It’s late.
The house is still.
the summer birds,
warblers & swallows
have gone to sleep,
each under a wing
or a leaf. I hear
their silence
through the open
windows & doors.
I look over at you,
silent as a Pope, reading.
Come lie down with me.
Sing to me.
Sing “Sweet Low.”
Sing “Sweet Adeline.”
Sing in your long, low voice.
Sing as though nothing
could ever harm us,
not inside or out –
Sing the sound of wind
through these cedars
who stand also long
& silent in the dark–
rooted & full of life.
Things that are Close
July 31, 1995
The sun
I am sitting on a deck chair
in the back of our house –
The sun streams into my
face, my arms and legs,
my torso, my fingers and toes.
It fits me like a glove.
It takes away all thoughts,
insists on total surrender.
My concerns,
like so much junk in a wheel
barrow, are carted away.
It leaves my breathing softly
and totally in love.
A Love Poem
October 23, 1997
Now that I am beginning to be old, I wonder about
pausing, or stopping, or
seeming to. When I move
into the unknowable, when
my spirit gives up my
body, like an old faded dress.
I am not very old, but
I think about this.
A silly thing.
I will miss my cats – unless,
of course, the spirit form
is able to lie between their two soft bodies in the cold
winter nights.
And the trees
of our woods – will my spirit be able to watch
day by day, the luscious green
leaves turn gold and fall down,
leaving dark bodies of trunks
as the wood’s sentinels?
And David,
will you be able to feel
my breath when you walk
in the woods?
August – Walking the Shore of Lake Superior
August 1997
Stillness–
and dull chant of waves,
light on everything.
squeezes between rocks
which are hot from the sun.
I pick one up
to warm my hands.
Sky, a blue dome.
No one but us
on the beach which is not sand
but small rocks
hard to walk on.
Oh, the stillness
which is not like emptiness,
more like our quiet
bodies as we walk,
more like the single
white gull who follows
us down the beach
on foot.
Christmas Collection
2000
The woods are creaking with cold.
Something ahead of me moves,
is still,
half hidden in twilight, but I
feel the huge body, legs
slender as willow branches,
eyes sunken from scarcity.
The only sound– a heart
beating wildly.
I do not know the inner meaning
of things.
Does mystery have shape and
size, scent and sound?
What is invisible
in what we see?
This curious world–
its sweetness and dread–
What holds us so gently
in the dark?
Christmas Collection
1999
Small, winged creature,
I balance you on the smallest
finger of my hand,
Your wings are sheerer
than the gauze that wraps
your wound,
There is goodness in this world
as well as dark. Darkness
holds the silent stars
but goodness can’t be held.
Standing in this field
with snow and open hands.
I sing.
Christmas Collection
1983
I startle from sleep.
A sound so close it could be in the room,
cat on the quilt at the foot of the bed,
stirs,
silence.
Again the sound:
an owl very close to the house,
on the roof or in the eves,
the sound again, unmistakable through the starry night.
I have no language to understand,
no language to answer,
to express my thanks.
Once when hiking with our friends, Kirsten and Jay Johnson, we accidentally came upon a rare and magical gathering of Monacrch butterflies in Carver Park, Hennepin County, Minnesota. These ethereal bearers of hope were preparing for their nearly 3000-mile migration to California or Mexico. Penny shared the magnificence of the moment:
Sam the Cat
February 6, 1996
I put my book on the table,
turn out the light.
Sam the cat
jumps on to the bed.
By moonlight,
I see him turning from whisker
to tail.
He is making a perfect circle with his body.
Turning once,
twice,
three times.
He is making a place for himself
in the tall grasses of my quilt.
He is making a place for himself in the countless
numbers of things on this earth.
Now he circles down into a yellow and white
ball, leaning heavily against the side of my body.
He purrs.
He sleeps.
I make a place for myself in the mysteries
of sleep.
I purr.
I sleep.