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    Past Life: Poems
    Past Life: Poems
    Past Life: Poems
    Ebook82 pages19 minutes

    Past Life: Poems

    By Ida Bettis Fogle

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Three dozen poems about life, time, childhood, motherhood, fossils, lightwaves, castles in the Ozarks, and other topics, selected from 25 years worth of writings. Several have been published in literary magazines and anthologies. This is the author's first published book-length collection.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIda Bettis Fogle
    Release dateApr 28, 2020
    ISBN9780463432457
    Past Life: Poems
    Author

    Ida Bettis Fogle

    Ida Bettis Fogle (that's me!) lives and works in Missouri, a state of more beauty and complexity than many realize. She has been writing poetry since childhood. Her day job takes place in a public library, where daily she is surrounded by the dilemma of so many books and so little time. She loves peace, justice and the Kansas City Royals.

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      Book preview

      Past Life - Ida Bettis Fogle

      I present the photos as proof.

      My children should know I have lived

      a life other than toothbrush nag,

      peeler of potatoes, bedsheet

      folder. Look. The young woman there

      with thin, muscular legs, her bike

      propped next to her. She would see bears

      later that day and you would not

      exist had she not been downwind.

      She pedaled eighty miles a day

      for those two weeks. Yes, she was strong.

      She slept in cornfields and outraced

      a rabid dog on the same trip.

      Where is she now? Still here. Somewhere.

      Un-innocent

      Years.

      I possessed too few

      for this to be at my feet:

      the death of a kitten

      jaw askew

      blood matting tawny fur

      one eye still open, accusing.

      It lay at my feet

      once I regained them,

      I having been the one to fall on the animal,

      my ankle twisting with the string I’d dangled.

      I wailed for the kitten

      and for my cousin who loved it,

      whom I’d made cry

      although she was almost grown,

      and for myself.

      I’d seen death before –

      a pet parakeet –

      never caused it.

      I don’t want it dead,

      I sobbed into my mother’s blouse,

      meaning not only I wished the kitten back alive

      but that I hated the power I hadn’t known I

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