Intent

your eyes
engage mine
inscrutable blue gaze
beneath brows as blonde
as ripened wheat

my ears are
empty of sound
fractured shells
their entire ocean
poured out

your soft lips
loose no vowels
no consonants
offer naught but
their silent O

though word-skilled
I cannot read the thoughts
you transmit with your eyes
yet I know it is language
that I recognize

perhaps you ask
who are you or say
I don't know you or
click a mental photo
of my face for your file

I save yours in mine
framed in letters worked
into words you'll learn to read
words to answer your eyes to say
I love you Michael every day

^

Biography

Grandmother of seven, I've been writing poetry since I was a child. I teach English at a community college in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. Two years ago, I spent six months on the northwest coast of County Mayo, just outside the village of Rossport. I was working on my Ph.D. dissertation and writing poetry and fiction. The wonderful people there made me feel welcome. My Irish ancestors all arrived across the pond by the 1850's. We have only been able to trace back across the water to the Tipperary Tooheys. But it was quite an experience to walk the grass and bogs of Ireland, knowing that the bones of my forbears had nourished that land and sent their genes down the years to me.