The Sunday Poet: Dorothy Shubow Nelson

Dorothy Shubow Nelson

Dorothy Shubow Nelson’s poems have appeared in: Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace, 2017; We Are The Port: Stories of Place, Perseverance and Pride in the Port/Area 4(Cambridge); Polis IV, 2014; Human Architecture VII, 2009; Consequence Vol. I, 2009; Atelier; Café Review; The Bridge; North Shore North; Rhythm Music Magazine; Sojourner; and various community newspapers. Her review of Viet Nam Veteran, Bruce Weigl’s collection, The Abundance of Nothing, was published in Consequence Magazine, Vol. V, 2013. Formerly a teacher of writing and literature for many years and Senior Lecturer in English at UMass/Boston, she has published The Dream of the Sea, Early Poems, 2008 and a chapbook, Something Near. She is the editor of The Inner Voice and The Outer World, Writings by Veterans and their Families, published in 2017. She has led the Cape Ann Veterans Writing Workshop since the fall of 2013. For this work she  received a Commendation Medal from Cape Ann Veterans Services. One of the early founding board members of the Gloucester Writers Center, she presently serves on the advisory board. 

Starting Over

I am broken

but to remember

how life is wrested

from each suffered child

each indignity borne

   by years of labor

each scraping of the

   iron skillet

each sharing of food

left over, thinned by

   water

each worker’s  thirst

   and migrant’s

each desire for life stolen

   for everything stolen

each soul abandoned

praise the food of others 

each home with heat

each family well, free

   of disease

praise those who clean

house, discard, fix, persist

                        Dorothy Shubow Nelson

                        June, 2018