2 Poems by Robin Throne: "You will know her when you see her" and "Driving to sunshine"

Hello! Thrilled to have another contribution to the 2017 Community Poetry Blog. This time, we are fortunate to have two poems from author/educator Robin Throne. Robin is also the guiding force behind the Poet-in-Residence program at Midwest Writing Center, as she had the idea to make this a biennial program several years ago. We are grateful for Robin's creative work, as well as her tireless championing of all things reading & writing. She's a tremendous asset to the Quad City creative community, and we're proud to feature her work here. Thanks Robin!

You will know her when you see her

Follow me through this field of witchgrass

A strangling nuisance—yes—but it will bring us there

Beyond the ragged robin and sharp cotton blades

Then down and through the sordid slough

There lies the most profound time and place,

a river really

I say go there now, yes now—while there is still some light.

Go there when your words can no longer save you

And your vital baubles were long ago thrown aside

You will be invited a seat at this table

On sand as sturdy as the moon’s tide

Despise her not oh young one

When you find us seated here at her feet  

We forgive all who cannot hear her

In this time, we can at least on this agree.

The path through the grass is now trodden

And whether you are lost, please no longer care

When you see her you will know her  

Like some ancient sister come to chat

It is then we will all remember

And it might be you next time who takes us there.  

For when this image has fermented in memory

And you render void this weaving path

I pray you recall this time I brought you here

For the next time, it will be she who beckons you back.

Driving to sunshine

for Carol

I left a hanging moon in my rearview.

It was the one that sucked my life dry as French roast grounds left too long, turned to mold and ash in an abandoned Bunn, and drove toward the light-fed clouds bent like Easter chicks begging sharp beaks pointed north as frigid as my heart chakra— now blocked cold by dense grey asphalt.

Today the tarot said the moon is our shadow and all we must do is pull away the curtain to expose the wizard and reveal that darkness amongst ourselves.

The one we run from.

We all have it.

Some more than others.

I knew it was there, somewhere, behind that cloud veil that paraded as a noon sunset for shoreline viewers who spew ahhs or swept up like a murmur-ation of starlings masquerading as rain clouds, or perhaps more like a cheap theater’s false ceiling that pushed us deeper and deeper into our seats in the old days where we found comfort in dramas acted out before us rather than in us.

I liked it that way then and knew, just knew, it would eventually come closer so I dug in, tight and close for act II, and waited for the curtain to lift in a cozy dark haze before the searchlights pierced through my dishonest obnoxious shroud. 

Cloud cover hovered with an unearthly capture of my focus—no center-line hypnosis, this time. Now fully awake like an ideal caffeinated-version of myself not long after a Starbucks drive-through and a barista high-fived me a good day.

Actually, that never happens as I imagine it. 

So I kept on driving toward sunshine with no wake left in me. I sailed along I35-south craving the red and yellow warmth, colors only a central sun can distribute among us. Closer and closer as if I were equator-bound through an unequal passage of dark to light and back again. Stuck in dark, believing in light. Always believing in light.   

Then I saw it. A safe and graceful sunny burst as a cross-shaped intersect hovered over highway and skyway. The healing came slowly, then lightspeed into lappy waves of a golden sea. That was when I saw her standing on the crown of my soul and she handed me the scroll that said, you will be whole now. They will not come for you.

The false curtains and shrouds and rain had no idea the light came not from the sun.

Forget the dark.
Wake up.