Mary Barnet

  Mary graduated from Pace University. Internationally published since 1965. She has lived in London, Mexico City, and Belize.  In addition to editing PoetryMagazine.com since its inception in 1996, she loves to take photographs. Mary also writes short stories and children's works, available at http://The-Manhattanite.com  and The Greenwich Village Gazette http://www.nycny.com/content/current/snuggley.htm
(The Snuggley's, for children) and generally cannot stop writing!
A retrospective of Mary Barnet's four decades of poetry appears at http://www.MaryBarnet.com.

E-mail Mary at Mary@marybarnet.com , or Editor@poetrymagazine.com

almost set free

your sneeze is a gibbon
in his big iron cage
the elephant trumpets
when you blow your nose
as you calculate your work
on your brand new computer
I am wandering Bronx Zoo's trails
with mother and sisters
in shining Easter clothes
adjusting my patent leather shoes & just-purchased hat
in the fine spring rain with the African animals
almost set free.

DANCE IN THE GLOW

In the glow of darkness
that is ours in the shining eyes of
love and friendship
within my land that
is everywhere oz
I DANCE IN GLORY
in the world you've given me
I rattle the sun
in and out
so that I am born
again and again
free as the night
AND LOVING IT ALL !

THE MAKERS OF PLENTY,
dedicated to Joe Epstein & R Schiff

I entered the room to find
You sleeping, and as you sat up on the edge of the bed
I saw that the faucet was running.
I remember thinking, certainly
There is "plenty" !

Entering my mother's home
Passing the kitchen as I went
I found her sleeping
And saw the water running into the sink.
Walking into the room of her dreams
I found her resting, murmuring
"Now there is plenty !"

NEAR WHERE THE 
WILD CRANBERRY 
POKES ITS
HEAD

Out the cedar-brown water
The one-hundred-thousand-year-old
Conches lie in pine pitch
Where the receding sea has left them.
This is a murky pool in which no one can see
Out which the white men will erect
Befouling earth and sky
Oil derricks draining the earth of her last bounty
Taking in years what only eons could accumulate,
To travel super-highways over a barren land.
But they cannot end the dominion of this maiden's
Long sought peace,
for this moment in which her proud brave
Propels her with his massive shoulders and arms
Through the boundless glory of
Their home and church ;
He has given her an ancient mother earth
As her religion
And their moment here together will exist eternally.