Poems - Ruth Thompson | Ruth Thompson Poetry

Second Childhood

Byrtrt July 27, 2014September 23, 2020

Second Childhood
for Lucille Clifton

Bless Lucille’s big hips!
And bless my own free-at-last hips!
Here they are dawdling
and not worrying one
bit about where they are
in relation
to anyone else.

You can look at me or not.
I am not saying anything personal anymore.

I am saying hips breasts belly legs feet
roots branches and big thick trunk
tides
sunrises
monkeys lithe and witty in the dawn trees
tigers shaking out oiled stripes of sun and shadow –

I say you can look at me or not.
I am busy dancing –
freckled
and fond
and fat as the fat old sun.

Ruth Thompson Poetry

Parrot-Colored Canyons, Winged Women

Byrtrt August 30, 2015September 23, 2020

I just got back from a week in the light-flooded red-gold canyons of Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, with a gloriously shining group of women writers. Nearly 120 women, all astonishing writers, of diverse histories and experiences and knowledges and ways of being in the world, gathered for the 2015 AROHO (A Room of Her Own…

Ruth Thompson Poetry

Goat Song for Spring

Byrtrt May 13, 2015September 23, 2020

Here’s a new poem for Spring, for the Year of the Wood Goat (MY sign!) and for all of us who have “come back to laughter.” Goat SongGoat-skipping down I comeringing my chime of bells – gold-eyed goat-fool, ancientmadwoman, blind eyes blue with sky. Bell-spilled from snowtopthrough lupine and buttercup and gold-throat lilieswhuffling snow-smell noisy…

Ruth Thompson Poetry

“My Writing Process” Blog Tour

Byrtrt April 26, 2014September 23, 2020

I was first asked to join the “My Writing Process” blog tour by the brilliant writer Rolf Yngve, whose “Chasing the Wolf Tone” is always fascinating. Since that time, I’ve been amazed to read the wonderfully diverse, thought-provoking posts by other friends and acquaintances – such an inspiring variety of style and personality! The questions…

Poems - Ruth Thompson | Ruth Thompson Poetry

Myopia in the Afternoon

Byrtrt July 27, 2014September 23, 2020

Myopia in the Afternoon What landscape is this? My flesh curvingover your bones, pectoral swellunder my cheek, darkness of tangled fur,and beyond that, the wet angled branch of a tree, and beyond that,something white, something pale blue.Call it tree and window,sky and snow. But what this is, so close at hand, I cannot say.This landscape…

Ruth Thompson Poetry

My Late-In-Life Love Affair With Seasons

Byrtrt November 1, 2016September 23, 2020

A few weeks ago a friend from western New York sent me a packet of autumn leaves from her woods. They were still soft, just fallen, red and orange and yellow and chartreuse, bright with banked fires. I wept. Until I moved east from California to live with my sweetheart in an old farmhouse in…

Ruth Thompson Poetry

About Whale Fall

Byrtrt January 24, 2017September 23, 2020

When a whale dies, it becomes whale fall. Its body, an immense ecosystem, sinks slowly to the ocean floor. But that ecosystem changes. First come ratfish, hagfish and sharks – mobile scavengers who smell flesh and swim in to feed. For years, sometimes, the vast world sinks. When it reaches bottom, new colonizers – worms,…

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