Poetry By Kristy Snedden

       Lucy Orloski CC




Recovery From Being Human

Through my life I gathered rocks just like these,
rained down from meteors, spit from volcanoes.
And why not? It hasn’t been easy
to arrive where I am. Suffering was involved.

As I undressed my body, every piece of cloth
revealed another flaw. I folded the rags 
carefully, found each a place in my chest.
Suffering was involved.

A friend helps me cultivate courageous love.
It is harder than the suffering.
There is fertilizer burnt into the rocks
and on the days of brightness

the rocks are bridges to you. When they seem
fixed and immovable, remember we are the same.
Think of who loved you and there was a day
when a rock crumbled under the stars.

I sprinkled that dust over you and in my chest
of rags. We are always being born and birthing.
On the hard days, here is my shoulder,
its open availability, steadfast, immovable.





Adagios

Surprised when the North Star
telegraphed the pear tree in my backyard

something about white flowers’ scent
and beds of Spring for my dogs

the branches lifted in melody
then floated petals down.

My brother pawned the family silver,
my father cried.

Who suffered more, my father
with hollow loneliness or my brother

who never returned to his body
for those two long months after  

father died? They left me here.
Some days I put on concertos,

listen for when the suffering 
crescendos into a journey

to the center of the earth, wait
in that warmth, catch the piano in adagio.

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Kristy Snedden has been a trauma psychotherapist for forty-plus years. She began writing poetry in June 2020. Her poem “Dementia,” was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 90th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work appears or is forthcoming in various journals and anthologies, including Snapdragon, The Examined Life Journal, Open Minds Quarterly, Pensive, and Anti-Heroin Chic.  She is a student at Phillip Schultz’s Writers Studio. In her free time, she can be found hiking in the Appalachian Mountains near her home or hanging out with her husband listening to their dogs tell tall tales.
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