You Were
You were perennial, alpine aster,
century plant, bee balm
for many years.
How constant whispers
can be, how clear.
Then the drapes fell hard.
Now I gather tops of blooms.
In my eye light you
live on.
I would gift you back
the weather, a wildflower,
sure of exactly
nothing. I rise still planting,
play through the clatter
of rain on tin top playing
percussion to the once shared inside.
Sheila E. Murphy. Murphy’s most recent books are Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023) October Sequence: Sections 1-51 (mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, 2023), and Sostenuto (Luna Bisonte Prods (2023). Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy’s book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland). Based on a background in music theory and instrumental and vocal performance, her poetry is associated with music. Murphy earns her living as a management consultant and researcher and holds the Ph.D. degree. She has lived in Phoenix, Arizona throughout her adult life.
Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy
