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A Place Made of Space
A place made of space
Still so wrong to believe
No mystery here
A poem calls me home where
My secrets are held, buried under
A bed made of fears
Near to wild flowers, and rivers
Your memory will call you
Home to this love poem
A Time made of longing
Of postponed and closed for now
And find us in the clouds
Disembodied voices
Call me away from
Sunset, sunrise, snowy owl dreams
A place made of space
A glance, a touch delayed
And vacation and kissing
At home in a poem
No difference, day and night
All mystery hours because
Promises unkept die
Not a beautiful end
Under our feet
Softness, goose down
This place made of space
In this time made of longing
Poem copyright © 2020 Carol Kapaun Ratchenski
Carol Kapaun Ratchenski is a lifelong resident of North Dakota, where you can see the sky without ever looking up and the open spaces demand art. And sometimes, love.
She is the author of two books of poetry, A Beautiful Hell, New Rivers Press, 2016, and A Certain Kind of Forgiveness, Meadowlark Press, 2019. Her work has won the Many Voices Project Award for poetry and the Birdy Poetry Prize. A Beautiful Hell has since been adapted to the stage by Laurie J Baker with the support of Theatre B and Humanities North Dakota. Ratchenski?s first novel, Mamababy, was published in 2013 by Knuckledown Press. Her work has appeared in Gypsy Cab, Red Weather, North Dakota Quarterly, Wintercount, Lake Region Review, Dust and Fire, Dash, NDSU Magazine and others as well as in the anthologies, Resurrecting Grace: Remembering Catholic Childhoods, edited by Marilyn Sewell, Beacon Press, 2001, The Cancer Poetry Project: Poems by Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them, edited by Karen B. Miller, Fairview Press, 2007, Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan, edited by Thom Tammaro and Alan Davis, New Rivers Press, 2018, and Rocked by the Waters: Poems of Motherhood, edited by Margaret Hasse and Athena Kildegaard, Nodin Press, 2020.
Ratchenski is a Licensed Professional Counselor and the owner/operator of The Center for Compassion and Creativity in Fargo, ND, where she also lives. She is at work on a second novel while she prepares to be honest, loving, disruptive and groovy at 60.