Judy Kronenfeld

Judy Kronenfeld’s full-length books of poetry include Groaning and Singing (FutureCycle, 2022), Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), and Shimmer (WordTech, 2012). Her poems have appeared in four dozen anthologies and widely in journals. Her memoir-in-essays, Apartness, is forthcoming from Inlandia Books in 2024/2025. Her eighth collection, a chapbook of poems, If Only There Were Stations of the Air, will be published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in early 2024, and her ninth, another chapbook, , will be released by Bamboo Dart Press in June, 2024. Judy is Lecturer Emerita, Creative Writing Department, UC Riverside.

Afternoon, Evening, Night

i.

On the closed blinds covering
my study’s west-facing windows—
as if they were a translucent
rice paper screen—shadows
of a few outside leaves
lift and sway, stirring
in a soundless wind.
Now they become agitated.
Now becalmed. Then they are
flustered again.

A flare of light brightens
the edge of a cushion.
Like a guttering candle,
a flush of light
flickers on my dulling page.

Soon, as if the trees outside
have walked closer, quiet leaf-shadow
almost fills the double windows. In a little while,
the warm flutters in the room
are quenched. And then,
the closed blinds turn flat gray—
the shadow play is over.

ii.

First there was darkness,
over the face of Ocean,
and then the Splendor!
But light did not expunge
the dark.

It comes now
slowly down.
It hushes the streets outside
the shuttered windows of my town.

It settles like a quilted
throw a daughter places
over the old woman
fallen asleep in her chair.

Its kind wing mantles
towns and fields,
towns and fields,
towns and fields,
until it dims your town
and your street,
and then, the mountains,
and the sea.