Language wasn’t
ashamed of us.
We lived like our poems,
nailed words into a chair
if we dreamed of a chair.
We listened to the rain and remembered
speech is a gift each time.
We put it all on the line, every poem
necessary as a button.
We knew our purpose.  We stood like elms:
didn’t plaster our names everywhere,
we unpeeled ourselves to write
epithalamia for heaven marrying earth
in a million meadows. Life was big enough!
We could wait out the winter
for real plums.

SHELBY ALLEN is a 2004 prizewinner in the Boston Herald poetry contest judged by Alice Quinn.
Shelby teaches poetry in Massachusetts state prisons and is completing an M.A. in Theater Education at Emerson College.  Her poems appear in Phoebe, New MillenniumWritings, English Journal, and elsewhere.