by Laurie Kuntz
“I have lost my name and I have lost my reputation.”
-Ruby Freeman
The wind speaks your name
and carries it into crevices
where only the wind can go
far from your calling,
and you find yourself
begging for the return
of all who called you Lady.
Witness your life breaking,
see loss and corruption corralled
in a gust of swirling air.
Struggle to end each day
not with the same stare tasking sadness,
but with a vision of some new thing.
Comes a June awakening,
a solstice wind makes chimes spin,
spreads a crimson sheet of plum blossoms over grey streets
and changes your moods, cools an anger,
makes you hear the song of stones sweeping red earth away.
You can see a clearing
in the horizon, get a different view
as the wind slaps you in an embrace,
and carries back your name.
Laurie Kuntz is a widely published and award winning poet. She has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net prize. She has published two poetry collections, The Moon Over My Mother’s House (Finishing Line Press) and Somewhere in the Telling (Mellen Press), two chapbooks, Simple Gestures (Texas Review) and Women at the Onsen (Blue Light Press). Her 5th poetry collection Talking Me off the Roof is forthcoming from Kelsay Press in late 2022. Many of her poems are a direct result of working with refugees in refugee camps soon after the Vietnam War years. Recently retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind.