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| Kelly Lombardi at the Porter Library, Machias, Maine |
IN MEMORIUM
M. Kelly Lombardi
May 6 1930- September 9, 2008
The Caretaker of the Unicorn
In my next life
I will raise a unicorn
a
lovely white unicorn
with
a dashing mane,
blue
eyes, and a
golden horn
We will sit in the garden
and converse
about the circularity
of the earth and discuss
the aptness of the circle
as
metaphor.
Perhaps, too, as I brush
his/her
mane (all unicorns
are hermaphroditic, you know)
I will ask what name
it will please her
to be called.
Gem, it is, then; Gem,
tell me, do you really travel
down through time
carrying all the wisdom
you've learned each life
with you?
How wonderful
to have that gift
to be wise each time
you come back,
wiser than when you left
the last time.
Perhaps,
you say,
but there are times
like now when
the trees are in bloom
the clouds are hurrying
through blue skies
The breeze is ruffling
my mane, the sun
is warming my horn,
that I think
I would like to take
a long rest this time.
It is not
so easy you know
being a unicorn.
M, Kelly Lombardi
To
hear the Salt Coast Sages tribute to M. Kelly Lombardi
on WRITERS FORUM hosted by Joan Clemmons, go to
www.weru.org archives for December 11, 2008.
Press Release September 3,
2008
Machias Valley News Observer
M. Kelly Lombardi of Roque Bluffs has been chosen by the editors of The Aroostook Review as the "spotlighted"
author in that literary journal's current issue. Five of Lombardi's
poems appear in the journal along with her photograph and a lengthy profile of her by Sharon Bray, a fellow poet and journalist.
Lombardi is a widely-published poet whose work has been collected in a book
entitled Tuscany Light and in an anthology entitled Full Moon Rising, both available from Moon Pie Press.
Also she has long been a teacher of poetry in the Sunrise Senior College at the University of Maine at Machias. She
is the founder and director of the annual Roque Bluffs Poetry Festival. She is the leader of a group of Down East poets called
the Salt Coast Sages. And she writes the "Poetryland" column in the Machias Valley News Observer.
The Aroostook Review is an online journal published by the English Program at the University of Maine
at Fort Kent. The journal's tribute to Lombardi appears in its summer 2008 issue, which is accessible at http://aroostookreview.umfk.maine.edu.
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A Used Bookstore
On a rainy day, what
better place to be
than in a used bookstore
with a rump-sprung
chair and a one-eyed
cat, a well-masked
fluffy-furred dog.
A good used bookstore
is where there's a read-
ing
light and a crate
by the chair where you
can pile a bunch of treasures.
Some will be old
friends,
some will soon
be new friends, some
will be amiable companions
in well loved old volumes,
maybe slightly
tattered, with
damaged jackets or sans
jackets, maybe a few
with dog-eared pages.
Ah, but loved,
read,
kept and treasured,
waiting there for you
to give them a new home.
M. Kelly Lombardi
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