Dancing on my roof all night
rain drops.
I watch their dance on the wooden boards
the color of the earth turning rich
sedum green and red
the moss below the maple
drinks up sweet wetness
lichen on the maple’s long gnarled reaching limbs
low, crusty, growth.
Mary Oliver says,
“It takes about
seventy hours to drag
a poem into
the light”
I don’t have seventy hours, I tell her.
Norma Bradley is a multimedia artist. She has been writing poetry since the age of ten. Several have been published in magazines and newsletters. Three of her poems are included in From the Listening Place: Languages of Intuition, edited by Margaret Blanchard. Norma is also an expressive arts therapist and the former director of education for HandMade in America.
About Seventy Hours—This poem reflects my deep interest in the details of the natural world layered with personal experience and reflection.
