Another Ripple
Prologue: I told my children years ago that the Grateful Dead song “Ripple” should be played at my funeral. Now, though, I would revise the words: We know the way home. I’ll meet you there.
What do you think, my mother asks, gazing
out from her patio at the lake
behind her house: Is it wind that causes
those ripples, or is there a spring that feeds
the water from within? What’s amazing
for me is her question’s reach. What does make
the water move? Which is it for the soul—laws
that govern the heart’s vicissitudes, needs
erupting like volcanoes at the core,
setting the surface to rumble? The truth
is both, I tell her. Still waters respond.
Daybreak: a dappled scarf whose prisms pour
light and pattern, chop, silence, age and youth.
Sunset: desire’s and wisdom’s subtle bond.
© Diane Allerdyce
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| Diane Allerdyce |
Diane is a poet, professor, parent, partner, grandmother, musician, yogi, and caregiver for whom poetry is a balm for the soul. Her poems have appeared in TheGroundUp, Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping, the chapbook Whatever It Is I was Giving Up and the collection of prose and poetry House of Aching Beauty.
Her story “The Gift” appeared in the North American Review (Fall 2019: 304.4): 43-50). (It was inspired, in part, by Wallace Stegner’s “Goin’ to Town”; an interview about her process appears at https://northamericanreview.org/open-space/conversation-diane-allerdyce-discusses-her-story-gift-her-partner-rory-spearing ). Diane’s short story “Kochma” appeared in Stories that Need to be Told 2022: A TulipTree Anthology; it was also first-place winner in the UK-based National Association of Writers and Groups (NAWG)’s 2022 Open Competition for Fiction and was republished with permission in their 2022 Anthology of Award-Winning Writing.
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