Wendy Videlock



Wendy Videlock graduated with a B.A. in Education from the University of Arizona and now lives in Western Colorado with her husband and two young children.  Nine of her poems will be appearing in the upcoming Geography of Hope, an Anthology of Western Colorado Poets. Her poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Pivot, The Lyric, The Susquehanna Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, The NeoVictorian/Cochlea, The Eleventh Muse, and on-line in The Melic Review, Terrain.org, and Samsara Quarterly.



To Hell with Spring

                          for J

To hell with spring. It's all too much.
The daffodils and bleating sheep,
those fragile infant roots that clutch
the earth, then stack their little hopes
on pastel skies and budding leaves.

To hell with it.  It's just too much.
Spring has no time for fallen things.
September is the time for touch.
A touch of gold.  A touch of cold.
A touch of truth.  No promisings.



Winter Cracked Open

Winter cracked open,
there lay spring,
soft colored thing.
Take me, she said,
swallow me whole.

And summer did.

Summer burst open,
there was autumn,
audacious thing.
Watch me, she said.
Just watch me fall.

And winter did.

Published in Blue Unicorn



Pattern

The arms and legs
of two, entwined,
over time, declined,
by one or the other
becomes in time,
a wistful thing.
Later, unraveled
by wistful things,
when one or the other
cries for the other,
yet
another comes
to forever the
entwining. (And though
the twine may look
the same, the arms
and legs do alter.)



I Know You, Sister

I know you, sister. 
You're the one
who runs and runs. 

And you as well,
mountain woman,
you speak the tongue;

your daughter is
the weightless one.
White witch, bright queen, 

I too have held
a box of stones
and called it gold.

Blue dreamer,
wife of mist,
I've slept your sleep,

I've kissed your kiss.
Man of blindness,
man in the moon.  

Alas, alas. I am you too.



The Wildwood Sisters

          Wonder

Wide-eyed she'll find you every time.
She will not steal your heart or soul.
She will not say: away from here
the sea rocks gently in its bowl,

the moon's the ghost of Gilgamesh
floating toward the silver pine,
the love you lost is dwelling with
the peregrine and goldeneye,

and by the bye,

deep in your chest, a well exists.
She is too busy changing form.
A hand upon your shoulder lifts.
She will not take your world by storm. 

          Wisdom

It's said she knows
what laughter is,

where peaceful goes,
what marrow does,

what deaf can hear,
how blindness shows,

what draws us near,
what bids us move,

what intellect
is fashioned of,

and what men choose
in lieu of love.

   All this I see
   you can believe.

It's said that deep
compassion is

the wine she drinks,
with pinyon seed

and wild aster.
   You don't believe.

Go, and ask her.

          Woe

No black sheep, she.  She has her place.
Her streaming tears and somber face
no stranger to these stranger woods,
to Wonder's gown, to Wisdom's hood.

A mighty oak stands near a brook
and in the brook are slender reeds.
An arduous and tender breeze
breathed this story through the leaves:

     Three sisters gathered in the calm,
     (for Woe had opened up her palm
     and something white had lighted there).
     A moment passed, a presence felt,

     and as the calm began to melt,
     she spoke the words that bent her fate: 
     you starry fools, it does not end --
     you've only learned how to pretend.

There was no sound.  No stifled cough. 
Sweet Wonder turned into a moth.
And Wisdom, loving of the young,
observed the breeze, and held her tongue.

Published in Susquehanna Quarterly