EUMENIDES
by Ce Rosenow
Life filled with a sense of place, work, friends, love. But something isn’t right.
Isn’t enough. Isn’t finished. Isn’t. The river rages by. I want forgiveness for wanting
more. Instead I hear: Be satisfied. Be grateful. Desiring the out-of-reach could
cost everything.
white water
the fury
in my heart
*
birthday—
a year longer
than Shiki lived
[from Spectral Forms]
* * *
From the poet-publisher’s Web site:
Ce Rosenow founded her first small press publishing company, North Lake Press, in 1990 and she co-edited its primary publication, Northwest Literary Forum, until 1997. She also co-founded Irving Street Press in 1996 and helped edit Portlandia Review of Books and a series of broadsides from the press before creating Mountains and Rivers Press in 2001.
Her original poetry, essays, translations, interviews, and book reviews have appeared in journals and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. She is the author of five collections of poetry: The Backs of Angels (Tel-let Press), Even If (Tel-let Press), North Lake (Mountain Gate Press), Pacific (Mountain Gate Press) and A Year Longer (Longhouse Publishers). She is also one of the eight co-authors of Beyond Within: A Collection of Rengay (Sundog Press) and the co-editor with Bob Arnold of The Next One Thousand Years, Selected Poems of Cid Corman (Longhouse Publishers).
In Ce’s poem, Shiki refers to Masoaka Shiki (1867-1902). For a good article with many translations of Shiki’s tanka, click here.