Paulann Petersen

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Seven Truths from The Realm of Symbol

Stars make the tight knots
            in heaven’s net.

The Great Mother
            loaned her lap to be
            the first throne.

Each window sees right through
            the hubris of a wall.

A drawstring purse becomes
            a woman’s vulva 
            blamelessly visible.

The sun’s hand—
            that fine-toothed comb—
            untangles any rain-mischief.

Wells are the earth’s
            wide-open pores.

A stone forest
            answers to the name
            Cathedral.

Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, has eight full-length books of poetry, most recently My Kindred from Salmon Poetry of Ireland. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The Birmingham Review, Prairie Schooner, Orion, Catamaran, Wilderness Magazine, the Internet’s Poetry Daily, and POETRY IN MOTION, which put poems on Portland, Oregon busses and light rail cars. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she’s the recipient of the Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts, and the Distinguished Northwest Writer Award from Willamette Writers. The Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds chose one of her poems as the lyric for a choral composition that’s now part of the repertoire of the Choir at Trinity College, Cambridge. Recently, one of her poems was featured on The Slowdown, American Public Media’s daily podcast.