She Draws Her Circle:
Selected Poems
by Joanna Leigh Osmond
For the chirping of birds
That pressure you feel
in your chest
in your toes
in your heart
that gooey tar
like
a car
wheel that
has melted into the pavement.
The car can no longer move.
It only
takes everything to
pull it from hiding.
Command it, I tell you
with the collection of voices
from the earth women
wild women
who crouch down sweating.
(You remember
their sounding
from the birth of
your child.)
Now they are here
for this and for you.
Yell it.
Sing it.
Command it all OUT!
And then—but only then—
as it flies away from your body
like some bitter smoke
from a chemical fire
you may send across it a
whispered blessing
may you know love
may you find transformation in
the eyes of eagles and
by the watching wing
Return to what’s yours
what has always been yours.
Like a piece of buttered bread
like a child’s hand grasping
like the softest of chirps
outside your window.
Listen dear one
for the chirping of birds.
They are reminding you of what
you have known for lifetimes.
Listen dear one
for the chirping of birds.
You have always been one with
the community of wings.
Listen dear one
for the chirping of birds.
Sing out, yell out—
All that rises must be heard.
--joanna leigh osmond
Second Chimney
Did you ever imagine
You could have a second chimney
That doesn’t show itself to you
Until way past your fifties?
It remains for you
To sweep it out tenderly
Blow on the embers—
Burn a new way.
—joanna leigh osmond
The Return
There is magic in the losing of one’s hair
falling out in clinging pieces on the floor- at the grocery,
in the shower, the first few strands to the widening part
like the parting of the Great Sea — it
opens a way to some heroine’s journey
into the abyss of darkness —
the grasping for air, sea salt licking at your
broken lips, air up, belly down
you give in to the tide of emotions
no more me, no more you
perhaps an end to the journey on this round ball entirely—
The loss of an image, community, story,
friend — whatever it is you are losing —
is nothing less than helping yourself into the beast of the
whale, one day to be coughed up and free. You were not
to have followed that vanity,
that teacher, that siren’s call — after all —and yet
it brought the beasts beating heart so close you could
hear it, projected you out onto the thrum of the ocean’s
wave that now carries your bruised,
tired, sometimes broken bones
onto the shore and plants you
in the warm and magical sand.
The hand of all that is Good is under you, (at last
you feel it),
and you are thankfully and finally here.
—joanna leigh osmond
Counting
1.
One is for…two is for…
One is for…two is for…
Out my art studio window there fly a gaggle of crows -
I know it’s a murder, but I don’t like the word.
I get to choose my words carefully now. It’s my poem.
2.
Visiting my son at college I find my anxiety
rising; we cartwheel off each other as we walk
down the hall.
I must remember to choose my words
carefully. I say the wrong thing anyways.
Twice.
One is for…two is for…
One is for…two is for…
3.
My arms are covered in blues and whites. I’m repainting
the kitchen to feel like the ocean. All morning long this
crow sits out my window
as if waiting for a sign that it’s time to fly.
4.
Sometimes my words are blurred letters
moving; sometimes I want to pin them in place
with a stiletto’s touch.
Sometimes I think they are filled with my
meaning, but they have always been moving.
We have always been moving.
5.
I am seventeen at her bedside, watching my mother’s
breath intently. I need words from her
lips so I won’t go hungry without her. She
is delirious and frustrated as she tries to communicate:
One is for…two is for…
One is for…two is for…
I don’t understand it — and in a week she’s gone.
6.
I grow up looking for signs everywhere. Will
this animal be my answer? Will this song be?
This dream?
7.
Walking with my son across campus, he is
irritated and anxious and wishes I would say
less. I scroll on my phone when an image
shines up at me — there’s a line of crows
heralding an old nursery rhyme:
One is for sorrow,
Two is for mirth,
Three’s a funeral,
Four’s a birth —
I look at our breath blowing a mist out
ahead of us.
He says he needs to head back to his dorm.
He says he needs to take a nap.
He says we are both so sensitive.
He holds out his arms and says
I love you, Mom.
—joanna leigh osmond
And What Lies Below
We are mother, counselor, woman, driver, pink
hair streaker, baby boo-boo kisser. We
inherited this body with these spiral of genes.
Below that is the place where we are born,
where raised, where in this culture, where.
Below that, deep in the bones, the soul stirs,
wanting to sing, down in the earth she sits with
her magnificent clay pot, stirring and mixing it all up and
together—the bones , and the dirt, and the pieces
of leaf skin, she turns them over and over. And
somewhere, deeper still, she starts to stir, to
sing from the bones, to blow back the life
without using words, just single simple softer
sounds; first whispers, then pain stirred,
eerie, then sweet, now deep and soulful—
bringing back the connection between the me inside her
and the beginnings of time.
Below the trees, down in the soil, under the
mountains, down in our bones, is where we
let go of all of our faces,
where we drop,
and join, held with the earth
in its deepest of hummings.
Back to our center,
and the humming whole.
—joanna leigh osmond
For the chirping of birds
That pressure you feel
in your chest
in your toes
in your heart
that gooey tar
like
a car
wheel that
has melted into the pavement.
The car can no longer move.
It only
takes everything to
pull it from hiding.
Command it, I tell you
with the collection of voices
from the earth women
wild women
who crouch down sweating.
(You remember
their sounding
from the birth of
your child.)
Now they are here
for this and for you.
Yell it.
Sing it.
Command it all OUT!
And then—but only then—
as it flies away from your body
like some bitter smoke
from a chemical fire
you may send across it a
whispered blessing
may you know love
may you find transformation in
the eyes of eagles and
by the watching wing
Return to what’s yours
what has always been yours.
Like a piece of buttered bread
like a child’s hand grasping
like the softest of chirps
outside your window.
Listen dear one
for the chirping of birds.
They are reminding you of what
you have known for lifetimes.
Listen dear one
for the chirping of birds.
You have always been one with
the community of wings.
Listen dear one
for the chirping of birds.
Sing out, yell out—
All that rises must be heard.
—joanna leigh osmond