Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
Elegy to My Mother
I have long felt your shadowed ghostly light
I have once seen your face inside a cloud.
I have out-slept the hours awaiting night
I have pretended death is not allowed.
I have once seen your face inside a cloud
while gazing through the window in my room.
I have pretended death is not allowed,
beginnings become endings much too soon.
While gazing through the window in my room
one breath of wind disrupts the fabric’s veil.
Beginnings become endings much too soon.
Awakened to your voice however frail
one breath of wind disrupts the fabric’s veil.
I shudder at the whisper of my name
awakened to your voice however frail.
Your dying done, now nothing is the same—
but maybe you’re the skylark in my dreams.
I have out-slept the hours awaiting night.
A fluttering in dark can sound like wings
I have long felt your shadowed ghostly light.
At 5:19 in the Morning
—For Sabrina
My daughter comes to me in sleep, her hair
a wisp of tendril feathered through the air
against my face, outside a trickling glare
of daylight seeping through the curtain's hue
creates a blurry sunbeam spilling through
uniting space where shadows dance from two
small sparrows perched together on a rung
suspended from the stairwell where I've hung
a feeder in the garden, veiled among
gardenias rising towards the sun, I gaze
at her with gratitude and think of days
when I was young, thankful for the ways
I've learned to carry hope inside my heart
when loss became an overwhelming part
of life. I pray that death is just the start
of something more that lives beyond in bliss—
assuming life's as fleeting as a kiss
comparing Heaven's reverie to this
yet sweeter than the scent gardenias left
behind my mother's ear where all she blessed
with fragrance lingers here. As if obsessed
my daughter gestures to the window's light
and says, I dreamed I was with God last night
just as the sparrows turn and take to flight.
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| AUTHOR BIO |
| Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program. She is an eleven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a seven-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012 she won the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. In 2018 her book In the Making of Goodbyes was nominated for The CLMP Firecracker Award in Poetry, and her poem "A Mall in California" took 2nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. In 2019 her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards and Epitaph for the Beloved was nominated for The Northern California Book Award. Her latest collection of poems Alice in Ruby Slippers, was short-listed for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and awarded honorable mention in the Poetry. She has served as the Editor-in-Chief for the Orchards Poetry Journal and Tule Review. According to family lore, she is a direct descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson. |
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| POETRY CONTRIBUTORS |
 Hilary Biehl
Michelle DeRose
Claudia Gary
Lynn Gilbert
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
Mia Schilling Grogan
Sara Henning
Jenna Le
Marjorie Maddox
Susan McLean
Samantha Pious
Donna Vorreyer
Gail White
Marly Youmans
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