POULSBO — Local poets Carol Despeaux Fawcett, Sue Hylen and Finn Wilcox will read beginning at 7 p.m. Jan. 6 at the monthly poetry reading at Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse, 19003 Front St., Poulsbo.
The readings will be followed by open mic.
Fawcett graduated from Western Washington University and earned her MFA degree from Goddard College.
Her memoir and her poetry have won first place awards in the Pacific Northwest Writers Contest and her current work-in-progress, a fantasy novel, was a finalist.
She received a poetry grant from Return to Creativity. She will be reading from her first book of poetry, “The Dragon and The Dragonfly.” She co-writes www.OneWildWord.com, a blog for writers.
Hylen is a poet and photographer who recently retired as arts and cultural manager of the Bainbridge Island Park District.
Her poems have been published in Stone Country, Arnazella, Ferry Tales, Spindrift, Spillway, Exhibition Magazine, Poetry Corners as well as on Seattle Metro buses as part of Metro’s 1994 Poetry Art Project.
In 2001, Hylen self-published her first chapbook, “Double Exposure,” which featured her poems and photographs.
Wilcox worked in the woods at the upper elevations of the Olympics and the Cascades with Olympic Reforestation Incorporated, a forest workers co-op, for 25 years; he planted well over a million trees.
He rode freight trains for several years to learn about the life, journeys, and history of the once-respected American Hobo.
His first book, “Here Among the Sacrificed” (Empty Bowl, 1984), includes the poignant images of legendary Northwest photographer Steven R. Johnson, depicting people in boxcars and railroad yards who appear in Finn’s memorable poems and stories. Wilcox’s latest collection, “Too Late to Turn Back Now,” contains his poems from “Nine Flower Mountain,” detailing travels in China; “Lesson Learned,” a group of love poems; and “Not Letting Go,” a suite of new poems and stories.
CAROL DESPEAUX FAWCETT
“Scattering Ashes
Harrison Lake, Canada
August 17, 2015”
I stand on the lakeshore, gaze
into its blue and green mirror—
cloudless sky above,
algae blooming below.
Your ashes ride the wind,
dust my skin, bits of white bone
speckle underwater rocks
like stars against black moons.
I pinch flower tops,
toss them into the water
only to have the breeze
blow them back to me.
I scoop them up,
throw them out again,
feeling as if I have
done this before —
this ancient ritual of
letting something go
to have it return.
But you are gone —
dissolved
into the lake bed,
into the water,
into me.
Two blue dragonflies
skim the surface,
laying eggs
over your grave.
A bald eagle swoops
down to catch a fish
that has breathed you
into its gills.
“Seabeck, Hood Canal”
I sit on a rock wall
facing sea and mountains,
journal in my lap,
camera round my neck,
waiting for that time
just before sunset
when clouds part,
when sunfire rains down
on mountains.
A skein of geese soars
above me, pulls apart,
then comes back together
like the part of me that stretches
across the canal.
Here, there are mountains
behind mountains.
I feel the effort it must have taken
to push upward, ascending
to heights unknown.
SUE HYLEN
“While Making Borscht”
Tonight I’ll cut hearts
in the middle
of a beet
and stamp love
on thick homemade
papers that will feel
like someone close
and red and as warm
as this steam
rising and coating
the kitchen windows.
“Midwinter, Bainbridge Island 1989”
Paste up snowflakes
on my kitchen window
juncos at the feeder
daughters swinging sky high
red boots kicking at the gray.
FINN WILCOX
“La Push”
Walking the flats—
through brushed huckleberry
and tall, tough salal—
I find the place
we spread my mother’s ashes
nearly a decade ago.
You can hear the rolling ocean
just beyond this sandy hump
that rises in the silvered-light
of drift-logs,
luminous,
in thin coastal fog.
I hope she’s happy here.
She was more than just a good woman.
Always that glitter of faith rendered
from a heart
big as these old-growth spruce.
Before I leave,
I make her a headstone
of the perfect blue sky,
above a perfect blue sea
with all its deliberate beauty.
“Lesson Learned”
Stunning—
the heart’s capacity
to endure
the ragged beat
of unclaimed love.
It’s only then that
the soul goes feral—
the mind
wild & weedy.
The heart has its limits though,
even the coyote has enough sense
to chew off a leg
to escape the iron trap.
