2 Poems by Ruth Baumann

Ruth Baumann is the author of Thornwork (Black Lawrence Press, 2020) & Parse (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). She is also the author of five chapbooks. She holds a PhD from Florida State University & an MFA from the University of Memphis.

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Solace

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Three of six in the photograph in front of me are dead, young & overdosed, but this isn’t a
poem about death, really, as much as it is about being still here. Being still here & trying to
make music from that. C tells me about Thin Places, offers a holy explanation for the way
the saltwater marshes calm me, make me either new or very old, shape me small, eternal, &
honest. I would like to hold his hand, hand him that sense of connection. I would like words
to give in the wake of all this nearby wreckage, deaths like wave crests passing by, sweeping
& startlingly irreversible. But I suspect if we get still enough, we all already know what we
need to know. I have no fresh ideas. Love is not novel. Inside me is something gentle &
honest that I give all I can to tend.




Rewiring My World

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God’s got both eyes shut some days,
not from apathy but from wishing
her creations could be nicer
when they are bruised. I get it.
Every meditation tells me to breathe out
a few counts longer than I breathe in.
Who says imagination can’t break
like bones? God, I wish, too.