Immobile Movement

Mercedes Lawry

 

Swimming in a Miro sky,
my fingers trace waves, spirals,
curled creatures and colors like words.
I beg you,
do not pull me down or utter prayers.
Let me navigate,
wind loosening my bones
as I become every blue,
deep dark to pallid ink.
And you can remember me
in the sea or the Lenten rose,
in the bruised shadows of mountains,
in the eyes of ghost children,
in the blood routes humming beneath skin,
in the ice-choked river plain,
in the fleet wings of migrating birds,
in the shards of stars truckling down
to rest on the shoulder of dune grass,
in the greater bareness.

 

Italicized phrases are taken from quotes by Joan Miro

 

 

Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rhino, Nimrod, Poetry East, and The Saint Ann’s Review. Her honors include awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, Hugo House, and Artist Trust. She’s been a Jack Straw Writer and a Pushcart Prize nominee, twice, and she’s held a residency at Hedgebrook. Her chapbook, “There are Crows in My Blood,” was published in 2007; another, “Happy Darkness,” was released in 2011. She lives in Seattle.

 

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