Girl as Birch

pretending

compliance              pliant,

ancient leniency

as

according to a (faulty) credo:

any agile gesture

equals allure.

Then, when wind abates

stature regained, a realignment

silent-limbed              liminal,

resilient as a branch

pushed from the path

and springing back.

Rebecca Kaiser Gibson, author of OPINEL (Bauhan Publishing, 2015), and two chapbooks, received fellowships from MacDowell Colony, The Heinrich Böll Cottage, and the 2008 Fellowship in Poetry from MCC. She was a Fullbright Scholar, teaching poetry, India, 2011. Founder/director of The Loom, Poetry in Harrisville, reading series, her poems have appeared in Agni, Field, Greensboro Review, Harvard Review, Ocean State Review, Salamander, Slate, Taos Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, featured in VerseDaily, and included in two anthologies. Rebecca lives in Marlborough, NH and teaches at Tufts University.

Why Poetry Matters: Poetry touches those vibrations we feel pulsing, those infinite correlations that hum in us.