Linda Hepner Poems

Peeling onions with my naked nails
Oh how close I come to paring off my parchment skin
And on it I shall write: if all else fails
This you shall send to those I’ve harbored, allies, foe and kin:
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The apple cart came rumbling down the street
Pushed by the apple man who’d piled it high
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God’s knife cuts deeply into the shadowed valley
And let’s us fall there. Then we scramble up
And trudge along, bearing our earthly goods.
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Are you my vampire? That is what he said.
I’ll just describe it. I was on my bed
Soaking the sun and reading ‘Life and Fate’
Vasili Grossman wrote app. ’38,
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I like to take a catnap now and then
For instance on a Sabbath afternoon
When book in hand I lie down in the den
A glass of tea, some honey and a spoon
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Adjustment

My children have been words. Words were children.
Phrases fat and thin that lined the fragile field.
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Those little innuendoes first
just niggle, then they make us thirst
for something.... what we can't explain
until some insight gives it name
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Lady moon you are a lamp of darkness,
You cast your shadow on the sunlit earth
Eclipsing spirit, stunting growth, a furnace
Of icy coals destroying heart and hearth.
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Pallid you may be; Athena, Pallas,
Was wise too, pale because she knew too much
About her lover's quite elusive phallus
Whenever she came near and wished to touch.
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Oh happy he who in his ignorance
Can spend his busy days in fruitfulness,
Who has no third eye for the clues of chance
And builds a scaffold for his happiness.
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