Today’s Poet’s Corner contributor, Elizabeth Zetlin, is described as a “nature poet with a twist”. She discovered poetry late in life, but her prolific body of work now includes a number of books and chapbooks, poetry videos, readings and awards.
Monarchs
There is a place where people earn a living
gathering fallen butterflies,
placing them back in the trees.
Imagine the soft thud
of forty six million wings, like breath
blown over the neck of a bottle or distant thunder.
In this place where poetry replaces
gold as the standard of value,
there is no unemployment.
Villagers have discovered
how to handle metaphors
without even
damaging their wings.
First Gardens
While the baby napped, I tied up the tomatoes
with old cloth diapers. Juicy as a plump
beefsteak, I leaked at his slightest cry.
I was there for the taking, open
as a field where anyone could steal
a dozen ears of peaches and cream.
My milk dried on the verge of lips
and the tomatoes never tasted sweeter
that summer when I was a new mother
and everything and nothing else.
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Elizabeth Zetlin, born and raised in the US in Virginia, now lives in Canada’s Owen Sound, on the shores of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. A former waitress, bartender, commodity futures broker, community organiser and arts administrator, she was named Owen Sound’s first poet laureate in 2007, and in 2013 their Outstanding Individual in the Arts. Elizabeth has a website at www.ezetlin.com.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. A poetry book will be awarded to each contributor.