Letting the Day In

Shedding the shrouds of sleep
and donning the morning robe —
coffee on time’s deck —
still against the ever moving
summer blue, sunsparked lake,
cycling the lane through the
canopy of green, white sails and birds
stitching between the swaying leaves
blending with the endless duet
of water and wind, we ride
enfolded in timeless blue and green —
this lake lane where childhood and old age
become a seamless waking dream
where summer never ends.

Adrienne Maher: I have been writing all my life; for the past 30 or so years from the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. I live in a small rural village outside of Rochester. I teach writing and literature at SUNY Geneseo, and education courses at the University of Rochester. My work tends to be personal, while it probes archetypal concerns of the heart, nature, and the creative process. My poems also tend to be long–they tell stories of the people and places where I’ve been in densely imagistic language reflecting lake country and small village life. I am also a folk musician, and have traveled to Ireland many times to learn and perform music, so some of my landscape and subject matter strays there. I have a Ph.D. in creative writing from SUNY Binghamton; Ruth Stone was my mentor, and she invited me to study there on scholarship.

I have published a handful of poems in journals including Southern Poetry Review and the Gown Literary Supplement. I go to places of grief; thus the title of my new manuscript, Driving the Dark, from where these poems come, but they are also about the moments of joy, beauty, and humor that sustain and elevate us. My first manuscript, Lilac Time, is under contract with Salmon Books in Ireland. My poetry reflects a lifetime of the creative work of a mature woman who has lived many roles—mother, grandmother, lover, teacher, traveler, musician, and who continues to learn, grow, and embrace the moments given and taken in a marriage of words and spirit—straw into fool’s gold that one can always hope might ring true and universal, at least in small ephemeral glints.