Deborah J. Shore

Anticipation

            —a sijo

 

A birdhouse, blue and tall, hung three springs past in the crabapple tree.

Chickadees stuffed it full of twigs—back hatch bursting—weighting the branch

which still grows downward, a variance, low enough for a fawn’s neck.

Truth Must Always Begin

                        —after Kierkegaard

 

            The clearest image
            is still perpetually half-
covered by milk-grey ash,

            as is your face—
            the self less true
more true by halves

            but more strange
            so that change itself
feels uncertain,

            fake (a mask)
            as you adjust
to imploding constructs,

            the need to be stripped back.
            The newborn head
rests on green blades,

            on fecund, discomfiting facts,
            breathes unknowing
air, focus pleasantly softened

            when not choking on the past.
            There is no eye so open
as the dusted lash.

Deborah J. Shore has spent most of her life housebound or bedridden with sudden onset severe ME/CFS. This neuroimmune illness has made engagement with and composition of literature costly and, during long seasons, impossible. She has won poetry competitions at the Anglican Theological Review and the Alsop Review. Her most recent or forthcoming publications include THINK, Thimble Lit, Ekstasis, Reformed Journal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Christian Century, Relief Journal, and the Sejong Cultural Society.