There are many different types of writing. Some writers specialize in the art of communicating facts clearly and effectively. Some writers spend years of their lives creating other worlds with nothing but a pen and paper. Others prefer to take the language we all use daily and give it rhythm, movement, and style that is the art of poetry. Our first poet of this series, Shaun Hooker, told us that he always have felt Czeslaw Milosz said it best: “I swear to you there is in me no wizardry of words. I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.”
Born in Lanexa, Virginia in 1983; has worked in the retail industry for twenty years and has used that experience with people in the unique approach to writing about the flawed and down-on-their-luck subjects he creates with empathy in mind.
Waters – Shawn Hooker
They found that girl recently floating like a doll,
skin translucent, waxy, almost blue like the water itself
that seemed to deliver her like a promise made
to return her to the earth from whence she came.
Some say she left the world at the decision of another
and some say she retreated existence to find peace
and still others said it was the Almighty Himself
asked her home to Glory, nevermind the reasons as they
are mysterious and without answer.
I don’t know about any of that, because at my age I tend to
forget things--
my phone number, why I left the house, where I parked my truck--
and my hands shake like fluttering leaves with their spotty
constitution,
but I have never forgotten the wail of the mother as she ran
to the waters as if they would seek to take her too,
asking some unseen person “Please, no, please no,”
and all the swirling lights from large trucks surrounding
the water,
as if to ward off future sightings of deliveries by the waters.
I remember letting the curtains fall back into place
and wishing to hide from the sounds of grief
and the louder silence of the one taken and returned.
--Shaun Hooker, 10/20/2020