Martha Strom

Featured Contributor Spring/Summer 2021
Poetry/Art

Martha Strom lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, where she paints, makes collages, and writes. Her poems have appeared in New Letters, Passager, Common Ground Review, besides The Stray Branch and other journals; and, recently, her artwork has begun to be printed in such magazines as Straylight Literary Arts Magazine.

The Forest

 
 take me to the greenest forest,
 o trees envelope me, o sky float me,
 take me away
  
 too long have i labored in the buildings,
 the city of anguish-- too long have i plunged
 into the moon’s fluctuations as they
 manifest in human vagaries
  
 today i give up self cursing-
 today i abandon striving
  
 but who will let me ride on his carpet?
 who will overload his burden
 so that i may lay mine down?
  
 i say my prayers by rote--
 not to accuse you of doing the same
  
 no more working at eating, eating…
  
 is this the beginning people talk about?
  
 i am not living in a snowy moon;
 i am not swimming this morning
  
 instead i am waiting for spring;
 instead i am waiting joyously
 instead i hop on to your carpet
 instead i learn about my quiet mind
  
 so take me to the brown and gray woods
 of which those birds sing
 of which i dream
 the land of meditators and penguins
 where i remain heaven’s pet magician
 whose white hair indicates sorcery