Mezzo Cammin: An Online Journal of Formalist Poetry by Women

Holly Woodward

Tryst

I love when darkness falls
over the writhing trees
and when the horned owl calls
at who knows what it sees.

I know how the fox slips
between the light and the dark
and the woken bear strips
the black elm's dripping bark.

I wake when the ice sheathes
the lake in broken dream
and frost pins frail gold leaves
to the cold neck of the stream.

We'll meet when the wolf turns
casting back one slow glance
and the splintered sky burns--
white knives in madmen's hands.

You see, when the storm throws
tree limbs from loam beds
and the torn north wind blows
the seeds from broken heads,

you'll know what the night hears
in the cries of the loon.
I'll be what the light fears
when it flies through the gloom.

Rapture

By the light of the dark
I have come hunting you.
My bow will hit its mark
because the night is blue.

It's clear from your disguise
you lie naked beneath.
I hear your silent cries
and rejoice in your grief.

The spell's already cast--
there's nothing you can do.
You cannot run so fast
that light won't shadow you.

AUTHOR BIO

Holly Woodward is a writer and artist. A chapter from her novel appears online in Podium, the magazine of the 92nd St. Y's Unterberg Poetry Center. A small handmade chapbook of Holly's poems is reproduced at the Gold Wake Press website.

POETRY CONTRIBUTORS

Melissa Balmain

Janann Dawkins

Juleigh Howard Hobson

Anjie Kokan

Jean L. Kreiling

Luann Landon

Michele Leavitt

Mary Meriam

Gail White

Holly Woodward

Marly Youmans

NEWS

Mezzo Cammin is proud to announce that The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, which will eventually be the largest database of women poets in the world, was launched on Saturday, March 27, 2010, at 6:00 PM at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tom Field)
Visit Timeline.

FEATURED ARTIST

Gail Biederman: I use sewing as a form of drawing, as one way to alter a surface. Thread is my line, a physical presence that hovers in space in my installations. With both a cast shadow and an edge that catches the light, thread creates multiple realities, a jumbled mix of hard and soft, the solid and the ephemeral.

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