The 2River View 21.3 (Spring 2017)
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Audrey Gidman

 
Meditation 51

The leaves on the old maple twitch in the afternoon breeze—bleeding soft reds and yellows
into their green shelves and it’s a Thursday, which means the bagpipe players have gathered

                                                                                         in the small park gazebo downtown
so as not to practice alone but become a brick wall, and today the mantra is Three Blind Mice

                                                                   —I tap along on the scratched wooden coffee table
(though each nail is chewed too roughly to reach the surface) and the leaves now look in groups
to be dancing

                                          attached by branches swinging like hips and glowing with the bright-
dipped sun behind them—a rustle like chiffon dresses—

                                                                                                                                  and the air
is turning gold, turning poetry and
                                                                        God is whispering—
 

Meditation 59

I walk down the sidewalk writing invisible poems to the taste of                                        blood
in my mouth. The sun
just bright enough to call the water out                                                                     from below
graying mounds of snow.
It is early March in the mountains of                                                                      the Northeast.
There are coins jingling or bells chiming                                                                   somewhere.
The sound cuts                                                                                                             uprooted.
Others are out walking too and they can’t seem to hide.
They avert their eyes but keep soaking.
There are souls on the street and they are                                                                      bending.
 

Audrey Gidman received her BFA from the University of Maine—Farmington. She has been an editor for the Sandy River Review and released a broadside with Foxglove Press (2015). She was the 2016 recipient of Slippery Elm Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in the Sandy River Review, Slippery Elm, The Unrorean, and elsewhere.


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