Among Others

Book Description

I.AMONG OTHERS, Marie Reilly's third collection of poems, considers the bittersweet collision of memory of long-held relationships with a life engaged in forming new ones.

II.The pleasurable creativity in events that offer the company of women forms the basis of the first segment, titled "One Among Others."

Reed/s

One reed and others
-hollow, one and all-
in shallow waters flourish.

In shallows refresh,
in sun enliven as
warmlight throbs and
fills the hollows.

One by one
they give up their song
to the winds. Oh
listen!


In "Yearning," the author responds to a sense of aging and the promise in a late-life aspiration to write poetry.

On the Wing

Birds in flight from snow, and Anglos:
The sky grays as now they
every last mountain climb
and night draws nigh.

Oh, aspire to wildness in stance,
in running, on bike and rock and ice
scale heights.

Pack a rucksack with desire,
cut fresh trails through the days
and through every remaining field and stream.


The third segment, "Confession," addresses the greatest consequence of her move to the southwest-the loosened ties to long-held and very dear friendships.

Fidelity

Who crave me still
accept the substitute,
a reconfigured me.

In me,
in my ruminations,
they find expression of

sustenance
in a late-life diet of writing:

a nourishment, taken with
the caress of late autumn breeze,
a late-life diet
at early winter.

Blessed so,
my shoulders my arm my hand my pen,
relax in their late-autumn, and
transform the time.

Oh, the carter's truck asserts itself.
Shoulder, arm, hand, pen, tense to transform
its unmistakable roar.

Who crave a letter from me amid
that volcanic rumble, must
accept the replacement now.


In "Around the Rectangular Table," the poet returns to the seductive character in local scenes.

With Estela-

-I ignored the old town,
the dirty earth, the rutted road,
but not the dumpsters sporting painted morning glories.

A mongrel gaped, we paused, he turned away
and disabused us of our fears.

I cheered Estela as she plucked a pomegranate, the plumpest one.

The sun wrapped itself around our shoulders.

And with Estela, I remembered dear ones.
I remembered a mother and a father, too,
with Estela-


She dares to proclaim herself a poet and to commit to a writing life in "In Full View."

Face of a Woman Writer

Grayed eyes, silvered hair,
face marked by indelible sun:
she embraces all or none-
or one.

She is a book
and you are welcome to read the
strange matters. Her gaze reflects the time she looks like,
no need (now) for guile.

Face it: pink, mottled
age-spotted, slack.

Writer, author, mother's daughter:
Pen to page, she does not stop,
she plies the trade until it paperbacks.

The author cares yet, ten years later
on bright and breezy days
in a southwest desert, she hangs her head,
too determined to be the writer she is
to be the friend
she was.


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