Into My Private Silence // Adrienne Asher Into my private silence I throw crows and branches, moon’s rising, bleached summer hills. There is a reason some say she’s a poet; it’s not what you think. At the center of all things is a spark. Brief and bright, it starts the song, moves the dance, unfurls words, splashes color. Its quick whisper shimmers just below the surface, sudden as a raven’s laugh, swift as an overflowing stream. Understand, I do not catch it, lucky even if I catch a glimpse. But still, she is my elusive muse: the glimmer at the heart of life.

At the 2019 Association of Writers Conference at an offsite poetry reading with Bruce Beasley and Suzanne Paola at Taste wine bar in Portland, Oregon. GREAT reading. GREAT conference: inspiring, exhausting, 4-day marathon of 15,000 people converging on Portland and celebrating the written word.

Burning Through Dreams Curved around my dreaming I dive deeper. Your image morphs into a candle flame wavering before me. Streets curve and reform under strange skies. Oceans surge and tower, falling. Lifted by the night’s tsunami, I awake with dreams lying tangled in my hair, the taste of the moon in my mouth. Your memory lies flashing like animal eyes in the dark.

Rest in peace—W.S. Merwin, the American poet, environmental activist, and two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, died Friday March 15 at his home in Haiku, Hawaii, on the island of Maui. He was 91.   Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveler Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one woman And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling…

I attended the memorial for my friend, the musician Linda Waterfall, today. This is the poem I wrote for it…and her.