Song

Brigit Pegeen Kelly writes a lyrical, surreal poetry that flies toward the magical. Informed by a spiritual vision, her poems sweep us into new relationships, as the darkness that “doesn’t come down, but rises up. . . . It gets the ankles first. It circles / The ankles like flood water gradually filling/The basement of a house. Dark water full/ Of unnameable things.”

“Percival”

Percival comes. If I pretend he is not here
He grows larger in the barn, filling all the shadows,
And then I cannot go in to feed the cows

And I hear those who give milk crying for milk
And I see their hearts, like children’s palms,
Opening and closing in the garden. Even in winter

I keep the garden. And Percival, who never looks
At flowers, taps his fingers on the water
That has frozen in buckets in the barn.

I hear that tapping. Even as I heard him coming,
Last night through my sleep, through the snow,
His heavy black coat dropping like wings.

ISBN: 978-1-880238-13-4

© BOA Editions, Ltd. 1995