Kelly Riedesel grew up in the Washington, D.C. area in a neighborhood full of streets named Iroquois, Huron, Onondaga, Seneca, and Cree, with Bald Eagle Road nearby. Much later in life, she learned she has Cree ancestry from the west shores of James Bay in Canada. She spent her career protecting the land and water. Though she focused on STEM in school, she made time for the literary club as a high school student and has written poetry ever since. Now retired, she has time to focus on poetry and belongs to two local poetry groups in the Asheville, NC area.
Love as Transcendence
You’re going to have to have the courage
To come to the door when I knock
And at least crack it open
Peak around the edge
And show me where the pain landed in your soul.
I will go there and find it.
I will.
I will pick it up.
Don’t worry,
I can lift it.
I’m going to hold it for a while
However long it takes,
I’ll hold it for you.
Hold it all, whole.
Together –
We can sense its inferno
Smell its putrid acrimony
Call out its eluvial layers then
Listen to the howling winds that formed them
And swim in the torrential waters that eroded them
All the while witnessing in each other’s eyes
Its vanishing dimensions.
Then, I will hand it back to you:
A force of nature
Reduced to rubble
That no longer has the power to destroy you.