Leah Kelley / Pexels

• Cora
• A new idea. There’s something strangely delicious in these strokes…
• I pocket the epiphany for a later pondering.

• My love is not a secret.
• We hail babbling brooks
• in daylight and learn to read,
• forming young names
• from ripe psalms. Uncorked
• and magnified, it grows
• larger for my waiting.
• No jaded hearts here to be
• gullible in their sleep.

• And even in sleep, we are bare
• to the blanket of salvation. We delight
• in the hush of our sacrifices
• and the patterns cut into cold tile —
• homebuilding for Creator,
• dunking brave prayers into
• fresh cream. Can something
• so humble be so fitting?
• We know the answer.

• Cecilia
• I am still tracking flights, but see me last April:
• grieving in a porched sweater, dreams less cerulean.
• And now? Now I choose the whole world.

• Our forsythia noon,
• fleeing shoes and ragged floors
• for what is realer. Tripping through
• the garden, praying with the garden,
• basking in the garden.

• The sun lolls across
• our matching noses,
• muddying our cheeks with
• verdant blessing and bloom.

• She plucks a slice of tangerine
• to tuck into my cheek, and sometimes
• I don’t know what to do
• with all this cherishing.

• Fettuccia
• The question: will I ever feel satisfactorily poetic,
• if I can never feel more poet than human?

• Hydrangeas budding in a gilded bed.
• The seasons shift and change the soil’s thread
• while sailboats race to river head:
• floretted sprays in piping pendants’ stead.

• We share our tales and suppers on the shore,
• then quiet mouths invoke a Someone More.

• How to describe this time with you?
• A dimpled ribbon, freckled green and blue,
• in bubbling fragrance winding ‘round and through
• each beast and frond on matchless cue.
• The earth unraveled: old and always-new.

• All breath that ever was in just a glance:
• our love a deeply present-minded dance.

Julia Wehner

Julia Wehner has been writing poems since her first poetry unit in the third grade—and can be found in present day wading through the Ohio Valley to unearth the stories it has to offer. Her largest dreams for the future include writing some simple folk music inspired by the greats, educating children in the art of noticing, and cooking every meal with home-grown fresh herbs. She hopes to tell honest stories through everything she writes, innovating commonly felt human emotions in an attempt to catch readers off-guard: to remind them how richly good it is to feel, and to live. She recently released her first illustrated collection of poems entitled Ripe Psalms, a downloadable e-book which tells a story of springtime pondering and renewal.