What's To Fear

Listen to the hawk's plaintive call,
the wind whispering to the river,
breath becoming breath
becoming silence becoming
memory becoming no thing.
It is as natural as a summer day
with the grasses bathed in light.
Remember the barefooted days decades ago
your body, a thoroughbred
itching to run?
Now it is an old mare with a lame leg.
Soon you will grow tired
of the terror that grips you in the night.
Pain is part of the great mystery
and you must hold it with
the tenderness reserved for
fragile beauty.
A dragonfly, translucent on your wrist,
a newborn folded into itself,
the deepening blue at day's end
before it lets go
into night. 

 Pamela Hill Epps’ work has most recently appeared in the anthology, 101 Jewish Poems For The Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press) as well as in other literary publications such as The Sandhill Review, Poetica, Wild Violet, in Writing Motherhood (Scribner), and has published A Last Glance, a chapbook published by YellowJacket Press. She is a psychologist, poet and jazz musician living in Tampa, Fl. with her partner and cat. She spends a great deal of time looking out at the river.