Jan Lee Ande

Selected poems from
Mystic in the Cloister

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Corners of the Mouth | After the Burning | Sabbatical

Her fingers loosen the warm musty
smell of soil and untangle roots.
Red chard raises veined hands in the wind.

Carrots descend into the dark of earth.
Thick stalks lift the heavy heads
of cauliflower (orbs white as moons).

Early on, she felt the fear in flesh—
bitter muscle the stuff of fiber and cell
yellow marrow with its history of loss.

In moonlight animals travel her dreams
along the trails, across shallow rivers
—their drone shivering in her throat.

She kneels before a cathedral of bones
cleaved hooves and weary knuckles
the fringed lashes of those black eyes.

With a stick, she draws two thin lines
of an open mouth. Between them
a gash—scratched in prayer, an offering.

© Jan Lee Ande 2007