SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Suzanne Cheavens
San Juan mountains, Colorado
Suzanne Cheavens has lived in the San Juan Mountains for over half her life. The natural world is her greatest source of inspiration. The journey into poetry is a relatively new one, though as a journalist, columnist and sports writer, hers is a world of words. The decision to embark into the poetic arts emerged — like most of her poems — out of the blue, but she was guided by the disciple of “a poem a day” endorsed and practiced by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. In a modern twist, rather than scrawl her droplets into notebooks Suzanne instead “self-published” and posted her daily poems on social media. People noticed. She persists. A published (real, that you can hold in your hand) collection is in the works. A devoted husband, two inscrutable cats, two adult children, Ma Nature and a vast community of creatives in the theater, music and writing realms are the underpinnings of her joy and motivation.
two by Suzanne Cheavens
Freezing Peaches
Hands slick with peach juice I stabbed myself two times.
Wresting fruit from the stone, filling bags
that, come the dark days, will fill the house with summer.
A prize from the freezer, dated August 2019,
and needlessly, “Summer” writ in orange marker
— Because it's always good to say the word
out loud when ice fangs curl around the roof
and into my dreams
— Because saying summer in winter is
an incantation of the finest kind.
Especially if peach cobbler is in the oven singing
memories of ripe times and bare feet and
no more ambition than to read a book
in a desultory fashion, swatting harmlessly
at flies and wondering how many gin and tonics
it will take to stop time.
The little wounds are like badges,
A stinging reminder that everything feels
good in the summer, even where I prick my skin,
To let it in.
Peaches
I think if I eat another peach
I will become one.
Fuzzy, a little soft, a little firm,
Above all, sweet.
Sweeter than I really am.
Now is my time,
But we all know how now goes.
It goes, and so will I.
It is up to me to remember
My peachiness, when winter storms howl,
And ice creeps into my veins.
That's when I must morph into
My juiciest, sweetest, summeriest self.
I am going to eat another peach,
So I will become one.