Poems on Love and Light by Shaun R. Pankoski

 

Image / Andrea Piacquadio

Poems on Love and Light

Rumi Said

be a lamp or a lifeboat or a ladder

illuminate the dark row to safe haven climb out of the muck become the lotus

Surrounded

I want to be that wild bee, drunk on peony nectar.

I want to be the Java sparrow, sitting in the backyard cherry tree.

I want to be the porcelain crab, tucked in a left-behind conch shell.

I want to be wrapped in fondant, soaked in the juice of a dragon fruit,

anointed with the scent of stargazer lilies.

I want to be the morning sky. I want to be on fire.

Seeds and Stardust

Earth nudges her seeds.

Sky grabs a fistful of stars. Seeds reach, though shyly. Stars run wild in the dark.

Two mothers, two kinds of love.

© Shaun R. Pankoski

Shaun R. Pankoski

Shaun R. Pankoski (she/her) is a poet, most recently from Volcano, Hawaii. A retired county worker and two-time breast cancer survivor, she has been an artist’s model, modern dancer, massage therapist, and an honorably discharged Air Force veteran. A 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared in ONE ART, Quartet, SWIMM, Thimble, Mackinaw Journal, and MockingHeart Review, among others. She was selected as a finalist by Lefty Blondie Press for her chapbook manuscript, Tipping the Maids in Chocolate: Observations of Japan, and as a first runner-up for their Editors' Choice Broadside Series for her poem, Lupine.

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