Experimental, intelligent, and environmental, turtle grass, a series of shadows, Muddy River Books, Brookline Massachusetts, 2014, Irene Koronas’ third full length book of poems. Her language resonates, melts into the past and jointly falls forward. The poems are written in traditional form, as well as, informational writings on nature, and romantic musing; she remains true to her own style, eclectic. Koronas is a well known local poet and painter, a Mass College of Art, graduate. She is poetry editor for Wilderness House Literary Review and a member of the Bagel Bards.

Irene Koronas.

song 10

grass tufts spring out and up from the deep

green wide leaf hosta. weeds grow

as if they belong in any garden. with

the promise to return even when uprooted

their tiny buds on slender stalk

ensure their return. their urgency during

late summer like a recess bell

jerks children from play, the slender

grass weeds wake me from my puritan

dream, mowed lawns and pond frogs,

white wooden churches and picket fence.

I wake, none to soon, for I am still

a foreigner in this city with cultured pearls,

roses and ginko trees. now that age

claims my bones and nature is a small garden

in backyards, where sun vies for attention,

I idle. my thinking more poetic than yellow.

my sentences sparse fallow weeds. I no longer

quarrel over what’s a weed or a plant,

both belong in my garden. my poems

like trifle small meaningless whims, I write

before night shuts out what little light filters

through onto green garden chair,

I sit undisturbed, while shade squanders

any need I may have had under maple tree

I read my poetry in my tiny garden

hosta and weed silences my verse

— Irene Koronas

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