Keeping

pink sugar
pliable newborn
perfect pump
eager to be primed

steady now
cells blush scarlet
separate & synchronize
                  so grandly

                  expanding into elation
                  joy-rides just beginning

tempo builds
accelerates
time & tides
gather & turn
                  surge on
                  without notice or pity

slowly but certainly
spaces start shrinking
until
uncertain walls
begin bit by bit
to harden
                  & brittleness
                  becomes breakage

challenge: continuation
courage to keep
despite disillusion,
to dare address
                  another dawnlit window,
                  the dark nightload of dreams.

back to issue

Judith R. Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer and poet. A 1980 summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, four poetry collections, one fiction collection, and edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. She teaches at Osher at Carnegie Mellon University.