Tag Archives: poem

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. 

Advertisement

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

Wednesday Prayer ~ June 3, 2020 ~ by Jessan Dunn Otis, Writer

“Begin each day with gratitude – for your life, for the sun, for the rain, for your breath.

Begin each day with love – for your life, for the sun, for the rain, for your breath, for yourself, for each other.” @JessanDunnOtis 6.3.2020 (c)

“I stand alone.” ~ Jessan Dunn Otis ~ #poem

I stand alone.

 

I stand alone.

Splattered by a bolt of sun.

It’s morning.

  (c) 9.7.18

Jessan Dunn Otis|Writer

       

Sun's rise / September, 2018 / photo credit: Jessan Dunn Otis, Writer (c)
photo credit: Jessan Dunn Otis|Writer / September, 2018 / Rhode Island (c)

Sailing With My Father – #poem

Sailing With My Father 

 

Historically a quiet man with an

extraordinarily dry wit

 

When sailing your quietude

became fierce, sailing on

the edge

 

The hand with a piece of shrapnel

from a war on the tiller, holding

steady

 

Face turned windward, eyes

noting obstacles, checking

cat tail direction

 

The rush of wind caught to

fill the sails

 

We were happy.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jessan Dunn Otis|Writer

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Dedicated, in Love and Memory, to my father, Mahlon Hendrickson Dunn, Jr., 1914-1992 / Until we meet again.

 

© Jessan Dunn Otis, August 6, 2018