Ellen Jane Powers
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Ellen Jane Powers is a Massachusetts native originally from the North Shore.  She earned her MFA from Goddard College in Vermont, where she studied with poets Chase Twichell and Alfred Corn. Her work has appeared most recently in Inspirit, The Comstock Review, Raving Dove, and The Deronda Review. Her full-length manuscript, Toward The Beloved, was a semi-finalist in a recent Perugia Press book contest.

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First appeared in The Deronda Review (Vol. 11 No. 2 Spring-Summer 2009)

On The Spirit Road

Following a winding path, switch-backed,
limbed with Lebanon and Deodar Cedars,
their branches lifting and drooping,
I breathe the betweenness of this place.
Above me, in unmoving daylight, blue sky,
filled with cerulean and white dots as though
waves of light were caught in strobe.
In the distance, an archway of lilac gray stone,
haShem, the Name, chiseled into its keystone.
Beyond, blurred like a rainy meadow full of wildflowers.
The road, the cedars, the light, spill
into this winding, winding road, where,
with each step, I, too, pour out looking for you
as the fireweed and steeplebush sway in the rain.


Psalm of the Storm
                   And He will make her wilderness like Eden
                                 —Isaiah 51:3

I hear the east wind
blow across the heavens,
the sycamores cradle the frost.

We were like them, in that dream,
in the day of fig-filled branches
empty of green leaves.

Do you remember: the quail sang
for her mate, and the east wind
answered with another’s call.

What signs does the desert give
under star-lined skies, and what signs
do mountains take from rock-faced nights?

I call to you, to remember the dreaming,
when the hard frost tore my skin
and only your fruit remained.

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