Turbula - Autumn 2004 - An envelope from Issaquah


Volume III, Issue III	Autumn 2004

An envelope from Issaquah

About Charlene Baldridge

Charlene is a prolific writer, having had not only her poetry previously published, but theater reviews and columns as well (many here in Turbula). She's contributed to everyone from Investor's Business Daily to the La Jolla Village News. She was also a contributor to "Chicken Soup for the Volunteer's Soul."

By Charlene Baldridge

Whatever this tenuous balance, art happens,
and I do not see it blooming at my fingertips,
forming under my hands
till others point it out; for its creation
has become simply A Way of Being.

I assemble fragments, is all,
and the whole takes me by surprise.
I wake to find drawings I don't recognize,
throw aside the bedcovers at 4 a.m.
put bare feet to floor,
and songs pursue me across the beige carpet,
to be rediscovered at dawn,
scrawled on the back of an envelope from Issaquah.

There are angels at my feet, faces in palm –
intricate weaving of nature put into my path
to remind me beauty is everywhere,
even as the hand and the mind meet.

Illustration by Charlene Baldridge

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