Issue 15

Summer 2003

Hazel Hutchinson

Hazel Hutchinson spent the first half of her life in New England, the second half in the Midwest. She currently enjoys an empty nest with a husband who nourishes her in countless ways. A lover of books of wisdom, Hazel sees both dark and light existing side by side in her soul and believes if we sift through our own ashes, find some kindling, a match or two, we can experience the freedom that comes from acknowledging and tending, rather than constantly trying to put out the fires within. As a retreat facilitator she encourages women to use writing as a tool on their healing journey.

As a member of Prairie Poets & Writers, Hazel co-authored PlainSpoken: Chosen Lives, Chosen Words. She has also been published in various places, including The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Flint Hills Review, the anthology Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace, AnotherSun, Intercultural@Platform, Netherlands.

Hazel is currently working on a manuscript entitled One Match.

 

at the edge of fire

we sit on the snow-laced log
watch the red and blue flames
dance and leap and lick the air

we feed it alder twigs
chunks of cedar the woodsman
left behind branches of pine
anything to make the fire grow

we hold our hands close
to the lapping flames the snow melts
on the ends of our Mamie-made mittens

steam drifts up and disappears in the smoke
and our crimson cheeks glow from firelight
that keeps us just warm enough
we don’t have to go home

handy work of a gutsy soul

(thank you Gracie)

impact stops my
breath thoughts once
threaded and
flowing through my
skull are left
dangling from the
thirty-seventh floor

my heart forgets to
beat just before it
explodes just before my
body plummets through the
air to the
hardness
below no

cushion no
breath no
existence my
gutsy soul blinks away
smoke and debris from
deep within my
shattered vessel

shards of light
penetrate the
dark cave as she
strikes and pounds at
weighty ruins the
lengthy renovation
begun

with truth hard and
sharp as a needle each
hole is meticulously
punched into
my skull and my
thoughts begin to
rethread

one by one each
memory that had
been flung unconnected
into pure air is invited
back to its honored
place within my
craniumed brain

and one by one she
tenderly stitches each
strand together with the
next and the next until
she transforms my
woundedness into
wholeness

© Hazel Hutchinson

 

 

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