The Sunday Poet: Karen Klein

Karen Klein

Karen Klein dances and writes poetry. She is a member of Prometheus Dance Elders Ensemble and dances with the intergenerational group Across the Ages Dance and with several independent choreographers, including Kelley Donovan, Brian Feigenbaum., Karen Bray. Her poetry was a structural part of Prometheus Dance regular company's full evening length performance, Desiderare, and her poem Hello, Babies, a movement/text/live music production was recently performed as part of We Create.Her poems have been published in The Drunken Boat, Pudding, The Aurorean, and are forthcoming in Cape Cod Poetry Review and The Comstock Review

Planted

Two summers gone since Jim became ash.

The hunter green square box

so heavy

           and him

           so skinny

           so wasted.

Some of him scattered from kayaks into the clam-filled bay.

Some of his cremated bones honor the earth,

           Adamah,  our birth mother,

intermingle with the soil under my newly planted

           Turtleheads

           chosen because they can survive

           Joe Pye Weed

           because weeds grow better than cultivars.

They’re natives and perennials and will come back next season

and the next and the next because that’s what perennials do.

But I made the wrong choices.

Unaware, I brought home swamp plants

who like to keep their feet wet

and put them in a sandy, dry soil.

They won’t come back next year.

                                                           Karen Klein