this piece
a low piece of me roams the kerry highlands
she’s barefoot, but sweatered
swatted by wind and witchcraft
she’s dogeared, dragging skirt-ed
searching the silences that teach
the kind of resistance her stories
groan to generate – agency in assonance
activism in abstraction, action in
anaphora: mystery mouthing as she
knees the base of a yew, worshipping
the yawp of the foreign land she awes
toward the page… sometimes we must
leave our self to find our selves
to meet wonderment reverently
respectfully…to shatter and excavate
the million more ways we can shine
VANESSA SHIELDS 