LINDA RHINEHART - POEMS

Linda Rhinehart, 30, is a writer, translator and musician currently living in Tucson, Arizona. She began writing poetry around 3 years ago after visiting a poetry event by accident. She especially enjoys writing about nature and spirituality.

Butterflies
​

I am going to write
a poem that is beautiful
a poem like the wings
of butterflies when the light
falls through the tall trees
and sets afire their fine hairs
and the membranes beneath
I will write a poem
like a constellation of monarchs
darkening the sky with a
single purpose, crowding the
trunks in orange splendour
I will write a poem, translucent,
hidden, like a butterfly in a 
tropical forest, brown, unnoticed
until the moment it unfurls
enormous blue wings
one day I shall write a poem
that flits soundlessly, joyfully,
perfectly from its cocoon 
into the waiting, hopeful air

​

Glimpses of Red

they have been chasing him
since the first sun rose unsteadily
over the first horizon
since they first saw him crossing the miles
of ice and snow and knew they could
do it too he is
royal red reigning over blinding white
among the dark leaves of the forest
they would catch glimpses of him
hunkered down with their buffalo
skins and deadly spears
in stories they seek him in
songs they still mock him in
every corner of the country they
acknowledge his brilliant furred promise
the crown of the meadow
the fox

​

Rose
​

sagging gently in the warmth
dreaming fitfully in the breeze
of colder barren lands
of your fingertips
caressing her thorny stem

a single petal falls 
into the wide Pacific
to sink or swim
on its own merits
a speck of sunset encased in endless blue

In Remembrance of You
​

I wish I could tell everyone
of the way you would
cross and uncross your legs in agitation
cross, uncross, cross
of the way you could start a conversion
with anyone, that easy gleam in your eye
how you saw things in colours
that were just slightly different
I wish I could speak of your pain
the one you hid so well
beneath a collage of tangled hair and laughter
I wish I could have shouted into the world
that I was lucky to know you 

I wish I could tell you that
everyone I met after you seemed like
a pale imitation and you the
real sun 

​