Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
Glenda Cooper
“Well, I have dreamed this coast myself.”
        —Robert Hass

It’s been years since the ocean spoke
its secrets below my window. This old woman
I’ve become.

My halleluiah mornings past, I praise
nightfall now, when, with sleep’s consent,
I still

walk a path that clings to the brink
of a stone-faced cliff that stares
across a froth of water. Below,

the beach—every shell crushed,
each sand dollar pierced by gulls.
Lately, I linger, though tides surge

upwards to the trail, as if the ghosts
of ten thousand lost fishermen cast
lucent nets across the way of return.

I awaken awash in the incantatory
tone of my footsteps on stone:
not today, not today, not today...











Repotting the Peace Lily You Gave Me
        in memoriam, Glen Patton

Its roots straggle over the porcelain edge once more.
Seven containers since your death, the last
too heavy to lift, but the lilies
can be counted on to candle into bloom.
Glenda Cooper's most recent publications include The American Poetry
Journal, The Eleventh Muse, and Three Candles. She has twice been nominated
for the Pushcart Prize.