Three new poems by Diane Mehta (Incoming Writing Fellow 2021) were published by Art/Light Magazine on July 12th, 2021. “Rock Garden in the Back Yard with a Ghost Tree and an Evergreen,” “Stay,” and “Disappearing Act” can be read in full here.
From the first stanza of “Rock Garden in the Back Yard with a Ghost Tree and an Evergreen:”
On sun-drenched slats of wood, the muddled air casts
blue shade, prehistoric smells, leaves petrified in shadow.
It’s all invisible and felt. I wonder if this back yard
landscape can cut away my clacking feelings of everything
corrupted in myself: the damned uncertainties, the fine print,
high-tide low-tide moods, the rut of muscles seizing up.
And then the shined oak bends below my feet as I descend
unstable stairs creaking. I stride fortissimo in joy
forth and back, into sun-erasing shadows
in my bright square yard. On a small table by a green chair
which for its angle and tilt seems designed for those devoted to light
is a soft round nest of twisted kindling and two white fur tufts
that fell in our yard, though the birds were gone,
in this way an artifact, historic and true, a downbeat
heartbreaking me as usual. I memorialize the unknown bird
and her birth-blue eggs fallen upon by storm, squirrel, cat.