Shrines--By Maralee Gerke--United States

Shrines

My grandfather’s inkwell,

a small silk doll,

and a red bucket filled with multicolored pens.

Dried lavender in a pale blue vase,

poetry books in jumbled rows,

words piled like salt cairns holding the tide.

Among tattered scraps of wisdom,

fragments of prayers, the past folded

into long white pages, I seek my inheritance.

Maralee Gerke lives and writes in Madras, Oregon. She is and avid reader and gardener. She describes herself as a work in progress. Her poems have been published in Calyx, Exit Thirteen, Moonset, Bathtub Gin, Anthology, Nerve Cowboy, Avocet, and Tigers Eye. She has published two books of poems and has had poetry and prose accepted in several anthologies. Her work can be seen online at Shadow Poetry, Long Story Short, and Moontown Café. She recently recorded 4 poems for the Oregon Poetic Voices Project. They can be heard at oregonpoeticvoices.org One of her poems “Refuge”, was recently selected to be printed as a limited edition broadside by the Penland School of Crafts.