Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

This Exercise in Being
by Shelagh Cosgrove

Sixth Contest
First Place

I am the corner turned
to reveal a mountain in sunlight, dark
left behind.

I am the years distilled
into a day.

I am a woman in her mid-fifties
holding a younger woman holding a girl
holding a child
inside.

I am neither American nor English
nor Greek nor Seminole nor Inuit
yet
I weave like them
when there are stories to tell
that are wondrous; I cry like them
when I am afraid or sick,
or a loved one has gone,
or I have forgotten
who I am.

Sometimes I dance or fly,
run fast or float on the wind
on the water,
and then I am dreaming

because after all
I have not forgotten how to dream.

I am a woman whom fear
makes graceless,
who tears at the fabric of love
and shrieks
because of the shreds 
of the orphan
                                    outside.

I am the child
who lies in the grass,
rocked in the mercy
of the scudding clouds.

I am that which changes
and that which never changes.

I walk both ways on the
city street,
and my love,
like the street,
has no name.