who crafts villanelles
counting meter on her fingers
with rhymes flowing from her pen.
Like Jacob’s Ladder, her poetry
bridges heaven and earth –
angels drinking from jacaranda blossoms –
swifts and butterflies.
Like a magnet, her poetry
draws you to itself, as if
you, too, walk in an olive-tree’s shade
or across the parched ground.
With the poet, you travel
through the gates of tears and laughter,
through the gates of darkness
and through the gates of luminescent light.
who rides her ego like Moses
who requested erasure from G-d’s book,
who shocks like Esther
in her unheard-of entry to the king,
and who is unsentimental like Aaron
who replaced people’s pain with peace.
Ruth Fogelman © 2007