Joan Woodbridge
Joan Woodbridge Poems
Light follows darkness as darkness light:
the stunned sun halts mid-dance
Shiva Nataraj
motionless
...
"What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? " "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg
The season frazzles
...
Kiswar Q'Inti*, The Royal Hummingbird of the North has entered this body
penetrating at the solar center
insinuating herself into each cell.
...
definitive compartment
outsized objects squeezing in
awkward
expose my naked unprolificity
...
Only now may it be spoken
that the Divine had placed her numinous imprint
upon the earth of those several young summers
...
What is it that I ask of religion?
I ask
that you serve
...
I am She-Bear denned in sweet earth
I dream snow-covered leaves and frozen fields
I dream fish asleep in icy rivers
I dream leafless trees and waning light
...
adamantine density
inner halls so steeply narrow
how much substance must I shed
...
Things one does when one's lover is away:
- stand in the freezing wind waiting for a bus
...
how it began is unclear
innocence and earnestness
the impossible 'Why? '
...
labyrinthine confusion
intuition runs about three days ahead of feeling
and for us
there is little love to gentle the edges of this land
...
I
She who waits
She who is asleep to the present and lives in the future
She who waits to be awakened, defined, completed, validated
...
Winter is working us now
the subtle air holds
a hint of snow
and we are captured
...
Inky art of the broad-browed night:
the moon has fallen
in a puddle of water
...
arching magnificently into air
I swim my being
between bliss and necessity
calling
...
Joan Woodbridge Biography
Iteration I: Blessed by the Great Mother, I was dropped into this life, a member of the several generations destined to negotiate the erotic boundaries between cultural prohibition, the whipped up frenzy of rock and roll, and mind expanding drugs- a short but intense period that lay magically between the availability of birth control pills and antibiotics, and the fateful appearance of AIDS. Iteration II: I come from a long line of barbarians, land thieves, and genocidal murderers. My English forbearers arrived in America on the Mayflower. I have been taught to be proud of my ancestors. And, indeed, I am proud that my Puritan ancestors would not abide the oppression of anyone-not themselves, not others. I am proud that they took a stand against slavery. On my mother’s side I come from French Canadian and barely acknowledged Native American roots- the hunter and the hunted are alive in my genetic code.)
The Best Poem Of Joan Woodbridge
Winter Solstice: The Return Of The Light And The Redemption Of Darkness
Light follows darkness as darkness light:
the stunned sun halts mid-dance
Shiva Nataraj
motionless
balancing lightly the luminous and tenebrous
exhorting us again to brave the redeeming depth of the shadow
Beyond the celebrated land of light
that seems so divinely uplifting
that dabbles in the windfall waters of virtue
and dallies in the garden of diversion...
we find
the locus of the Shadow
that disquieting darkness
the vision that threatens to char the sockets of the eyes
We know the shadow by our avoidance
the nimble step
the sideward glance
the drowsy daydream
the sidestepped fantasy
the impulse denied
or not
We know it by our accidents of speech
the slip of the tongue
the telltale blush
and the complaints of friends
We know it by our nightly dreams
that render such faithful and unswerving service
to the shadow.
Go then
taking as your virtue
both courage and impeccability
swords against fear and pride
That from which we turn away grows stronger
Joan Woodbridge Comments
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9/18/2026 3:34:24 PM # rel_20260910T140628Z_5ffb431
