by Sheila E. Murphy
I practice tasting the lifespan of the tone I punctuate with tongue. Page turner lifts the page, I hold the stage. Whole notes resist the space confining them. I fill the flute with breath and feel the mind let go. Savor passage slow perfuming intact viscous lines of chant. This woodwind light enlivening the room, the trucks, the child noise in the yard.
Treble clef leaflets fallen from a kind and supple sky
Sheila E. Murphy’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Hanging Loose, Fortnightly Review, and numerous other publications. Her most recent book is Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). She received the Gertrude Stein Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy’s book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland). Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy.
Little Leaf Literary Journal 