Poetry by Judith Laura

Judith Laura:
Contradance

Not squares,
they stand in long lines waiting
for the call.
Women and men
at times outrageously proper but
more often sedately
improper,
greeting neighbors,
trail buddies and
even lost cousins
on the way to the top
or bottom
where improper roles reverse.

Swingers all,
they swirl and spin, balanced
for an instant.
Afloat a fiddle tune
hand grasps hand,
clutches waist
quicker than a breath
as faces blur and thought
departs leaving
dancers riding
the cresting wave
of the unchained flow
and laughing.

Copyright 1996, 2000 by Judith Laura. All rights reserved. Published in Pudding Magazine #30 (June 1996)

Judith Laura:
Autumn

A leaf
lone
high up in mid-air
rolls green edge
over brown,
yet never falls,
sustained by a spider’s strand
invisible
to me.

The Jeweler's Daughter

The jeweler's daughter
dislikes diamonds,
disdaining their colorless chill.

If she must wear a ring,
she chooses instead
passionate amethyst
fiery red garnet
sea deep blue topaz
genuine jade.

But even more she treasures
pebbles from the park:
obsidian, tigereye, shale,
agate, mica and flint,
feldspar, rosequartz, pumice,
azurite, fluorite and prase

and best of all,
soft black coal
with which she can draw
from life.

Judith Laura:
Elegy

She paused
between the Torah and the Buddha
and changed
her name
to the Spanish for
to be.
Cursing the knife that scraped
love's laugh
from her bloody insides
to satisfy custom
she bled
no more.

She cried
between the circle and the cross
between, they whispered,
male and female
yet found there not conflict but
union.

Discounting the gold that flowed
to her,
no devotee of Mammon,
she planted it where none
could see
it grow.

She hid
between the pinnacle and the pentacle
barren, refusing
to pluck the hair from her chin
or shave the shadow from
her soul.

Witch,
they called her
and so might she be
for she gave to children thrice
the good
she got.

She rests
amid light from moon and star
coasting on the wind of sky and sea
and claims her name,
the Spanish for
to be.

Copyright 1998, 2000 by Judith Laura. All rights reserved.
Published in Prayers to Protest (Pudding House 1998)