by Karen Gookin
Those nudges
make more sense now, seem real and recognizable—
as clear as the red-winged blackbirds following alongside
me on a morning walk, their trills bursting with memories
of a friend who loved them. Yet jogs of mind need no birdsong.
A faraway cousin effortlessly overtakes my thoughts, and later
I learn his son has died the night before, or my brother flashes
before me, and yes, I’m stunned—fifty years past his own death.
Such moments evoke a wonder that shapes my thinking, reorders
my day, prods and pushes me to reflect, to think forward,
to hold a hand, send a card, say a prayer. To believe. To trust—
as when I paid attention to that elbow in the ribs and found my sister
crying when I called. Who knows how they come, or from where.
A spirit, an energy, a neuron tingling in my brain, or just imagination—
I’ve stopped looking for logic. Nudges come often now, the door
to somewhere open wide for moments past and in the making—a life
lived beyond limitation, gliding on breath that moves in the wind,
encircling all of us within a single space and time. I ride in gratitude.
Karen Gookin grew up in the wheat-farming country of North Central Montana. Her poems recall family times in that Big Sky land, along with life and loss in the shrub steppes of Washington State, where she and her husband Larry, both retired professors, raised their two daughters. They have lived in the "Evergreen State" now for over 40 years. In her “working” life Karen taught English at public school and university levels, wrote and edited for two newspapers, and played flute/piccolo in one of Washington’s regional symphony orchestras. Her poems have appeared in Cirque Literary Journal, Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal, YARN, Washington Geospatial Poetry Journal, and Yakima's Coffeehouse Poetry Chapbook (winning the Tom Pier Poetry Prize). A first chapbook of 25 poems, The Hills Around Are Dust and Light, is scheduled for November 2023 publication by Portland's small press, The Poetry Box.
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