menopause

                                                            voice at midlife

                                    by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

                                    what is this heat aching to be heard

                                    like an answer of a summer’s storm:

                                    thunder lashes within my flesh

                                    as liquid pulses beneath its fragility

                                    when shall it rain

                                    for every lesson the geography is the same:

                                    coming home is the body’s yes

* * * * *

Sister Lou Ella is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53).