Poetry by Geraldine Connolly

      Danny Navarro CC




The Great Forest: Max Ernst

Beyond the great forest lies
a sky the color of bruised doves.  
Trees like fallen skyscrapers
fill the scarred woods.

Among exploded bark,
lopped trunks twist and 
pause like massive legs 
of mahogany draft horses.

The tree trunks lean on 
each other, tilted, askew.
In one of them a bird 
still exists. No leaves or dew.
  
A circular ring floats
like a mirage, an eye opening,
white and eclipsed, behind
the forest’s thick gloom.

Now I see it. The bird is lit--
a nightingale which imagines
the dream of quiet days
when the war has ended.

And the small animals 
who live beneath the underbrush,
uncaught and hiding,
are ready to be reborn.





After My Father’s Funeral

I freeze. I walk alone in my skin.
Now comes despair that cannot warm,
the sharp wind grown keen as a blade.

Coat of grief, my second skin,
you smell of his pipe, his cologne
as I button myself into your form.

My heart would wear your armor,
to go forth, to face the thorns.
In your absence, I wear your coat.

Like the forest I wandered as a child.
tall oaks sheltered me, I floated the creek.
Enclosed and safe, I would not break.





Spring in the Sonoran Desert

More than warm winds and orange flames
flickering from the tips of ocotillo,
more than new rabbits and cactus wrens,
it’s the shock of the morning sun 
knifing through the clouds that 
stuns me. Mesquite and ironwood leaves erupt,
lupines and poppies brandish blossoms. 
The desert, once bare and fragile, once brown 
with winter’s crust, is suddenly all riotous blooms. 
It’s possible, I too can change.

Spring’s arrived like someone’s kicked off 
a festival. Carpenter bees buzz around palo verde, 
newborn lizards scuttle across sandstone.
Mourning doves burble and coo. 
I can leave behind the humdrum of winter,
its bruises and disappointments, my failings,
the pandemic’s straitjacket. Our yard
is filled with the hope of littered seeds.
I am ready for the business of beginning 
anew. Milkweed open their
tiny buds as if to say anything is possible.




​Geraldine Connolly has published a chapbook and four poetry collections including Province of Fire and Aileron. She has taught at the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland, The Chautauqua Institution and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland Arts Council, and Breadloaf Writers Conference and her work appears in many anthologies including Poetry 180: A Poem A Day for High School Students, A Constellation of Kisses and The Sonoran Desert: A Field Guide. She lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her website is www.geraldineconnolly.com