Catching Feathers
(Inspired by Rene Magritte’s The Victory*)

by Cristina M. R. Norcross

 
The soul should stand ajar, says Dickinson,
so I stand at the doorway of joy,
where land meets sea,
the waves of life’s small crashing moments
licking my feet with salt,
ushering me into the next breath
and then, the next.
 
I sit further up on the beach,
contemplate the clouds,
their pillow softness,
and imagine every sun-filled memory
I can touch—
the quiet exhale of my first-born son
after nursing,
when his head rested on my shoulder,
his tiny form, barely reaching my waist.
 
Another cloud passes by.
I get lost in the opaque white,
think of the waterfall in Ambleside
where we took that family photo,
mist coating our faces as we smiled
for the camera.
 
I look deeper into 
the blue expanse of ocean, 
see my father eating a bowl 
of clam chowder in the pub in Newport,
called The Black Pearl,
how happy this made him,
this simple pairing of black pepper,
clams, and cream.
 
I leave my soul ajar
so that joy may find a way in,
like mist,
like memory,
like life dropping a feather 
from the clear blue sky.


* * * * * 

*A link to Rene Magritte’s The Victory: https://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-victory-1939

Cristina M. R. Norcross is editor of Blue Heron Review, author of 9 poetry collections, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee.  Her most recent collection is The Sound of a Collective Pulse (Kelsay Books, 2021). Cristina’s work appears in: Visual Verse, Your Daily Poem, Verse-Virtual, The Ekphrastic Review, Pirene’s Fountain, and others, as well as numerous anthologies. Cristina has helped organize community poetry projects, has hosted many readings and is co-founder of Random Acts of Poetry & Art Day. Cristina lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two sons. www.cristinanorcross.com