Poetry from Susan Millar DuMars

The  poems below are from Susan Millar DuMars. Susan is an Irish American poet living in Galway Ireland. We like them and think our readers will too.

                                                                   

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Both my poems are from my recently released book Bone Fire -- they are Barefoot and Reclamation. The latter poem, which has also been broadcast on national radio here in Ireland, is a positive poem about being menopausal, and is growing a little cult following all its own, as poems sometimes do.  Women a little younger than me tell me they find it hopeful (hopeful and menopause not being words one normally sees together), while women my age and older are more like, "Whew!  Someone said it!"  We may need more poems about being menopausal. Susan Millar DuMars

Reclamation

Susan Millar DuMars

The blood has stopped

and with it the need

to suckle lesser creatures.

My breasts are pale, cool

proud

and mine.

The blood has stopped

and with it the need

to shield smaller souls

inside me.

My womb calm.

Not weeping.

And it’s my womb.

I’m learning the pleasure

of empty.

The weight of one.

Nothing on my back

but a breeze

getting colder.

The blood has stopped

and with it the need

to grow anything

but older.

Barefoot

Susan Millar DuMars

Here she comes.

Joy, tripping down the field to me.

Her face light and bone.

She smells of rain

and oranges

her voice hard

and warm

like a wooden chair left out

in the sun.

Here she is.

Joy touches me

with her tiny starfish hands

and she is barefoot grass

first bite chocolate

every song I loved when I was nineteen.

She holds me

and I am peeking through a keyhole

at eternity’s shine.