Tag Archives: poem

Summer Solstice 2025

Morning star,

Crescent moon,

Blue-dark sky,

One bird song.

Jessan Dunn Otis (c)2025

J E T T Y

At moon high tide

I run off the end of the silvered dock

Phosphorous confounds inverted eyes

wanting to grasp something more

than air can offer

to sustain this body sinking

into black mollusk mud

and transparent jelly fish.

Jessan Dunn Otis (c) 1985

From the unpublished manuscript MIGRATIONS OF THE HEART

One Bird

One bird sings its morning call,

waiting for a reply

The sun sneaks up, silent in the East, again

There were no shadows

I sit here #writing this to you.

@JessanDunnOtis (c) 2023 #Writer #poem #poetry #poet #RhodeIsland

I just wrote and posted this poem on Twitter.

Reconfiguring

Since May 21, 1996, I’ve marketed myself as an independent, freelance writer/editor, collaborating with some amazing clients. To them, as always and again, many thanks for trusting me.

It’s true, from time to time, I did my own work. Not enough, however.

After twenty-seven (27) years it’s time to reconfigure.

Going forward I’ll be focusing more on my work that has laid dormant or ignored too long.

This is my path. Not to walk it is unconscionable.

#DanceOn…

DISSOLVE

As when you touch yourself for the first

     time inside and out

Or when you have left without saying goodbye

     for the last time and you do not know it yet

Like walking into a dark room where everything

     is known and you are excited that

     something alive and beautiful will brush

     your face

Or I am the long tree whose branches

     move gently wild from the wind

     and leave marks on your face

     that you will remember when you dream

     and you will go back to stare for days

     until your eyes ache

Like arms that nobody who has ever loved you

    has had before or has held you more strong

    than you will ever be held again

And you will weep because you know that

    that is true.

(c) Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis – 1985/1987 – CQ, California State Poetry Quarterly, Spring-Summer 1987, Volume 14, Number 1, p.11. 

There Is A Woman

There is a woman

lovely in her bones

She does not see.

Jessan Dunn Otis (c) 2022

Washed In The Water

I’ve been washed in the water

Baptised into another life

You restore my soul

You rejuvenate my spirit

You lead me to still places, even

in the presence of turmoil and

terror

As safe harbor in a storm

Let me drop anchor and hold strong

against torment-tossed winds

I’ve been washed in the water

true home

Welcome me back when all this is done.

______________________________________

Jessan Dunn Otis (c) 2022

GREAT AUNT JESSIE – poem

, or we don’t talk to the ones

who

know and survive

          It is past time

          to call you back again

          The old ones are dead

Like water bright

in the eye

           The brush of memory is too wide

           And the surface is shimmered and wrong

Long afternoons listening

to the old woman about 

her old women

           The algae of remembering obscures

Again and again.

Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis  © 1985

Long Grass

The long grass moves

The breeze blows

One opposite of the other

I know where that rabbit is and goes.

(c)2022

All One

Alonesomeness –

the sweet pleasure

of Spring’s sun rise

(c) 2022