Gloria Heffernan
Gloria Heffernan’s forthcoming book Fused will be published by Shanti Arts Books in Spring, 2025. Her craft book, Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She received the 2022 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. Gloria is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books). Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Poetry of Presence (vol. 2). To learn more, visit: www.gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com.
Growing Out
It was not a deliberate act.
It did not start out
as a metaphor for survival,
or growth in the midst
of worldwide suffering,
or a political statement
about sheltering in place.
It was simply one less thing
to worry about.
But now, as it brushes
my shoulders,
restored to what’s left
of its natural color,
my long hair shines,
shot through with
a garland of silver threads
that tell time as accurately
as any clock or calendar.
I have stopped dyeing.
The short-shorn layers
of the pixie cut
with its red highlights
needed more upkeep
than a lawn in summer.
Now, uncut, unaltered,
it floats like graceful strands
of Spanish moss drifting
in the summer breeze,
wild and beautiful
and alive.
In This Bleak Midwinter
I want light.
Enough light to read a roadmap
that will lead me to the place
where hope resides.
It doesn’t have to be
a star in the East.
It can be a neon light
in a coffee shop that says,
Come In. We’re Open.
And really means it.
A light that will not
surrender despite an off-switch
that would so readily
plunge us into deeper darkness.
A light that persists,
even in these darkest days,
overcoming the shadows
as it declares, I’m still here.
