Laurie Kuntz
Ode To My Wedding Ring
We married at lunchtime
without a ring to circle our love,
then years later, when marriage wanes,
you bought me a silver band
with puckered crystals
that a Cambodian woman, a refugee,
had chiseled while waiting
in a camp for her new life to glimmer,
unlike our lives dimming
in the tired shadows of our own making.
The ring, much like the life we built
is worn to a tarnish,
and I am reminded that all that glitters dulls
and needs to be polished
to regain its shine.
This Personal Eclipse
Why can’t we change
as quickly as an October landscape,
whose air no longer sounds with terns and jays
who have gone off to warmer climes.
It is the fleeing that paralyzes—
Lovers and friends, who have left,
keep us, for the time being, still and lost
in the harsh landscape of our bodies.
This personal eclipse—
covered shadows mark us barren
as the moon, which in all its phases,
ultimately reemerges whole.
Gilded
The full moon spills
through a jalousie window,
and on our dusty sill,
sits a framed photo of us
when we were better.
I am reminded
of all the moons past
and passing over our lives:
Wolf, Sturgeon, Harvest,
and with the arrival of spring
the frozen sweetness of trees
begins to melt, ready to be tapped.
Over us now,
the maple sugar moon,
and once again,
the weary wax and wane of time
is captured on a dusty sill,
in a gilded framed photo
of when we were better.
Triste
There’s something sad about a daffodil on a windowsill in February.
The miracle of the blossom against grey panes,
the brazen orange mouth that speaks in wide O’s,
when I am still living in backdrop
of winter sounds, uncertain what each patter
and rasp might be.
The roll of wind against shutters.
Glasses shifting in a rack.
The dog scratching at its chain.
Not yet ready for this bulbous shout of color on a sill,
or the comfort of my own loneliness yawning wide and loud.
Laurie Kuntz’s books are: That Infinite Roar (Gyroscope Press), Talking Me Off The Roof (Kelsay Books), The Moon Over My Mother’s House (Finishing Line Press), Simple Gestures (Texas Review Press), Women at the Onsen (Blue Light Press), and Somewhere in the Telling (Mellen Press). Simple Gestures won Texas Review’s Chapbook Contest, and Women at the Onsen won Blue Light Press’s Chapbook Contest. She’s been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Net Prizes. In 2024, she won a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been published in Gyroscope Review, Roanoke Review, Third Wednesday, One Art, Sheila Na Gig, and other journals.
Laurie Kuntz Interview at Moment Poetry
Laurie Kuntz at Sparks of Calliope
Wow. The art goes so perfectly with these lovely, wistful poems.