Shelly Reed Thieman
Notice Me
Don’t look for me in a flowerpot or between soft ripples in the pool. Don’t get me wrong—I love a dahlia and a moonlit dip—but search for me in the sand, a shell basking in moonlight after the last beachcomber has gone. Pick me up and carry me all the miles home. Leave me in the yard for the children to discover. Let them hold me to their ears so they learn my lullabies. Notice me in the shrub or sapling, the never gaudy female goldfinch. Let me help myself to the maple’s sap and daisy seeds. If you listen I’ll sing for you. Would a bird bath be too much to ask? Discover me in rain rushing from the downspout. Leave me as a puddle there and let the girls bare foot or rainboot splash. Or collect me in a pail and water the tomatoes and the houseplants. When all that lasts of me is love, freely give me away. |
Tiris
On a walk in the cemetery with geese in our ears, we hoard minutiae. How styrofoam cups that hold our morning coffee will decompose in five hundred years. How quickly a plucked clutch of buttercups begin to wilt. How the vibrant babble of an infant soon morphs to words from nursery rhymes its mother sings. How silver fringe begins to sweep our middle-aged temples. How the bumblebee rushes from nasturtium to aster, acute with knowledge that summer is finite. How crops miscarry while spring is already pregnant in topsoil. swelled with awareness
linked by impermanence tears germinate *Author note: this is a haibun, inspired by an entry John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows--Tiris, the bittersweet awareness that all things must end.
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Shelly Reed Thieman writes to befriend the wounded. She’s a messenger of imagery, a mistress of montage. Her work is influenced by the discipline of haiku. Her poems have appeared in numerous print journals, most recently in Adanna Literary Journal, Last Leaves Magazine, and The Cities of the Plains: An Anthology of Iowa Artist and Poets. Shelly is a two-time Pushcart nominee, and lives and creates in The Tall Corn State.