Sue Silver

I met Sue Silver in West Virginia when she was poeting around the Charlestown area. She brought white sage into my workshop to "smudge" each of the writers and to cleanse our creative scene. It was then I knew she was a poet for me to know. Now, in a temporary medical residency in Annapolis, she is tasting of the Annapolis/ DC poetry world and finding the area indispensable. When she settled in, all the foxes jumped out of their lairs, the rabbits from their holes, the fish from the sea to greet her, for she's a healing energy among us. And her poetry is too. - Grace Cavalieri

Sue Silver is a poet and photographer living in Shepherdstown, WV and in Annapolis, MD where she currently works. In the field of Medicine she is a Nurse Anesthetist, CRNA.

She is published in Lummox #3, by Lummox Press, The Anthology of Appalachian Writers Volumes III, IV and V, Poetry and Prose, First Lights, and In Good Company. She reads her work at Bookend Poets of which she is a member, Scheherazade and Artomatic Jefferson County as well as on the radio at WSHC Shepherdstown University radio. She has studied with Bookend Poets and Sotto Voce and at Shepherd University with the Appalachian Masters Programs.

Sue has a deep interest and love of the practice of Energy Medicine and Transformational Healing of the whole person and finds poetry to be a major vehicle of that work.

A POEM AFTER MARY OLIVER

WHAT WOULD YOU DO

What if a hundred eagles

called you by your name and flew above you.

What if a crow sat at your window

told you how to fix the printer.

What if the summer breeze blew in your window

took away your aches and pains.

What if the whistle of the passing train

gave you an idea for a novel

and you became filled with joy.

What if the news was filled with

stories of goodness in the world

and all hostilities ceased.

What if the light in our eyes became so bright

we couldn’t kill each other any more.

What if you finally knew

the value of your every breath

the way the flower turns its face to the sun.

HEAVY RAINS

It is raining a heavy cold rain.

Late August of this wet summer,

temperatures swinging to the lows.

An unusual summer

completely out of the ordinary,

like the large Grackle, that found

itself in the house today.

Not one of the three of us saw him enter.

And he,

frantic at the kitchen window,

looking for an immediate way out.

Not at first eyeing the open door.

Escape available.

And then he took it, winging out,

his great silhouette against the Eastern sky.

This evening with the heavy rains,

an air, a promise of wood smoke

a promise of cozy nights by the fire,

hot soups and stews, their fragrances

lingering through the evening hours.

The evening hours when we will turn

our eyes to the winter moon and

wear the crisp starlit skies on our

brow,

stamped and claimed with the

rhythms of our lives.

Like the peoples of ancient times

waiting for miracles from the

unknown world,

or making miracles in our new world.

When all the world needs is

for us to love it enough,

love it enough to save it

from ourselves.

IN THE MERCY OF STILLNESS

In the mercy of stillness

regret cannot enter

nor journey to its center.

It has no mode of transport there.

In the sweetness of stillness

the heart finds its home

always empty, always full

the quick Light dives deep.

NIGHT LISTENING

I listen to the crickets droning whir

as if to pluck my dreams out of the sky,

nestled on my pillow it’s a blur

I have to lift my head to listen more.

Listening with my whole self in the night

with dreams a lost repeated whirl

of incompletes and waking at the spool

unraveled thread, mostly awake

endures enduring all the night.

And still the crickets stitch the night

saying with their rhythmic song

secrets of the journey here

the mystery of night song born.

DARK WATER

The dark waters, brown colored

in their depths, know nothing of my blood

running out from this deep gash

while fishing, this new knife unwieldy in my hands.

The kindness of strangers

asking if I’d caught anything

helping in my distress to bind my wound

stem the flow for all I know

the uncaught fish sallying for light

caught in a flash of reflection

watched me from beneath the pier

amazed at my ignorance, eating gladly

the bloodworm I dropped there.

At the hospital the nurses take such care

I am swept and cleaned and stitched

the lost light of this lovely afternoon

a picture past.

I visit again this windy pier

I do not cast nor attend to fishing gear

but walk and sit and linger in the cold

and ask the fish for another year.