Emily's
Chamber
by Jo Barbara Taylor
by Jo Barbara Taylor
after
lines by Sarah Edwards
Emily
enters the evening
garden
like a tide
that
slips onto shore, awakens
sensual
senses, reaches
beyond
today,
erases
yesterday, seeks evidence
for
tomorrow.
Her way of
being
in a world of interlopers,
and
at low-tide, she leaves,
retreats
from the garden shore
to
sanctuary. In her room,
plain
like a cotton bedsheet,
she
writes, taut
words
tumbling smooth
onto
white linen paper, tucked
and
folded in.
Jo
Barbara Taylor lives
in North Carolina, but is an Indiana farm girl at heart. Her poems
and academic writing have appeared in journals, magazines,
anthologies and online. How
to Come and Go (Chatter
House Press 2016) is her fourth book. She leads poetry-writing
workshops through Duke Continuing Education, chairs the workshop
committee for the North Carolina Poetry Society, and coordinates a
poetry reading series for a Raleigh independent bookstore.