Like a Curtain by Jan Freeman

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend December 28, 2015   Like a Curtain   Jan Freeman

When she stretched her arms the mist lifted and the red buds opened on the maple trees. She, in the garden in pajamas, danced with her friend Isabel, as the fledgling robins wobbled and flew from branch to ground. Cells multiplied in her body. Her fingers spread, the warm cool air, as the mist disappeared like a curtain, open.            Copyright © 2015 by Jan Freeman. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “On the fourth anniversary of my friend’s death, I stood in morning haze, surrounded by columbine, irises, and giant buttercups. I remembered a spring many years earlier when she swirled in circles through the garden. She had been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and her happiness seemed to trump death. Warm air, greening leaves countered my friend’s absence in the future. The garden offered a fluidity between her passionate life and death hiding in her cells as if life and death were a continuously rising and falling curtain, like the morning mist.” —Jan Freeman   Jan Freeman is the author of the forthcoming Blue Structure (Calypso Editions, 2016). She is the founder and director of Paris Press and lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts. Poetry by Freeman   Simon Says (Paris Press, 2000) "The Sadness of Clothes" by Emily Fragos "Only as the Day Is Long" by Dorianne Laux "What Is" by Jeffrey Yang Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038