Old Plum, by Valerie Bacharach

Old Plum: 4 sliding doors, by Kano Sansetsu (Japan). 1646.

Old Plum
      
The landscape, continents away from where I stand,
hemispheric change, yet oddly similar.
 
Rough, layered stone, trees twisted by the bellow
of wind, a few branches in bud, a few branches
 
heavy in death. Yet among this bleakness, an explosion
of delicate flowers, white tinged with pink. Next to them,
 
a valiant beam of red petals and green leaves rooted
in rock. If I stare into the flower’s heart, I can see
 
the past, back and back and back, when the world
was blushed with beginning, the sky held
 
a young sun in its turquoise hands, the spirits
of the dead twirled in mad joy.

Valerie Bacharach

Valerie Bacharach’s poetry has appeared in several publications including Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh Quarterly, US 1 Worksheets, The Tishman Review, Topology Magazine, Poetica, VerseWrights, and Voices from the Attic.  She is a member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic workshops and conducts weekly poetry workshops for the women at Power House and CeCe’s Place, halfway houses for women in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.  Her first chapbook, Fireweed, will be published in 2018 by Main Street Rag. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.