She Wakes

By Hari Bhajan Khalsa

She wakes each

morning to song,

willing to let the rain

christen her

nakedness, to take

a chance that lines

of caravans will arrive,

scrawls of boats

and windmills

will be etched

in her sand.

She isn’t sure

she can bear

the days when birds

don’t light

on her head,

scratch thoughts

onto her page.

Hari Bhajan Khalsa grew up in a small town in Central Oregon, has lived with her husband in Los Angeles for the past forty years and is looking to return to her rural roots in the near future. Her poems have recently been published in Sand Hills Literary Journal, Birdcoat Quarterly, Potomac Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal and Panoplyzine, among others, as well as forthcoming in The Halcyone, The Blue Earth, Gasher, The Rupture and Zone 3. She is the author of a chapbook, Life in Two Parts (Main Street Rag, 2010) and a book of poems, Talk of Snow (Walrus, 2015).