Laura Grace Weldon – Four Poems
Light Through Leaves At The Window
A cobwebbed window gowned in dust
is Cinderella-ized by golden light
beamed into the room
through waltzing sycamore leaves.
It casts star charts on these walls,
this ceiling.
Tuesday falls away.
Earth’s cares recede.
We see galaxies twinkle into
and out of existence.
Hints flicker, lightdark lightdark,
at mysteries of mathematics and music,
meanings coded into everything.
We can’t stop looking.
Until, too soon,
passing clouds break the spell.
From the kitchen, where dinner
doesn’t magically appear,
NPR murmurs about trade deficits.
Secrets displayed on walls and ceiling
fade fast, although
something lingers,
as if we’ve danced past midnight.
Still dazzled, we part.
You to bring in the mail,
me to put supper on the table.
Syrinx
A branched vocal organ
allowing birds to sing two notes at once.
She’s been crusted over with gloom,
hard to open as a window
stuck shut after winter’s harsh chill.
The glass is dusty. Birdsong
heard through it nothing more
than muffled avian politics.
She tries again, hands shoved hard
suddenly swinging upward, warm air
suddenly pouring down her throat.
Into her ears flows
a wood thrush’s precise
improbable notes
as they rise and fall simultaneously.
A double stop, sob and laughter,
lifts from her mouth unbidden,
like an answer.
Touched, As They Say
Names bestowed at birth are announced
as the capped and gowned cross the stage.
I’m teary-eyed for the first student,
still verklempt 340 graduates later
when the bright light I call my son
shakes the dean’s hand.
In his final years my father’s eyes
filled at a tender story or fond memory.
In his last minute, tears issued
a farewell he couldn’t utter.
The older I get, the more my reservoir
spills over at a science journal’s
wonder-dense words,
a remembered song, a Facebook photo.
Soon I’ll be dripping
like the icons of St. Mark Coptic church.
Not miraculous tears, just the world’s beauty
overflowing, like every other member
of the Sacred Order
of Handkerchief-Carrying Ladies,
prepared to daub my grateful eyes
if I so much as smile at a baby’s
peek-a-boo in the grocery store.
Fellow customers will think,
she’s a little touched, that one.
Touched says it all.
Fellow Passengers
are invariably preoccupied,
freeing me to look at hands,
nearly always clutching,
at heads atop spinal affidavits,
their faces singular,
their eyes lit from within.
All I can do
is sense the silent song
our bodies sway to
in unison
through this half-awake dance
from one place to another.
Author’s Statement on Beauty
Everything we take into ourselves forms who we are in a continuous process of becoming. Maybe beauty reaches into everything, linking and making meaning in ways well beyond our awareness. Maybe it is hidden in stories, sights, and sensations we deem ugly or frightening because we aren’t tuned to beauty. Maybe finding beauty is a choice we learn to make.

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of a poetry collection titled Tending and alternative education handbook, Free Range Learning, with a book of essay due out soon. She’s written collaborative poetry with nursing home residents, used poetry to teach conflict resolution, and painted poems on beehives although her work appears in more conventional places such as journals and anthologies. She lives with her vast optimism on a small farm where she’d get more done if she didn’t spend so much time reading library books, cooking weird things, and singing to livestock. Connect with her on Facebook and at lauragraceweldon.com.