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Somerville resident Bridget Seley Galway has a new book of poetry out, What Moments Yield. She writes, “The poem Coyote is about a past experience in 2003, while still living in Provincetown. It defines so much of who I am, and what I find most precious in this life. There is a quote by Mark Strand about the meaning of poetry, which defines perfectly how I feel, and what inspires me to write: ‘A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what is to be. It allows us to have the life we are denied because we are too busy living. Even more paradoxically, poetry permits us to live in ourselves as if we were just out of reach of ourselves.’ ‘Here’ is a poem which relates to what Lawrence Kessenich described on the back of the book. I will paraphrase a bit along with his quote. The physical details of my poetry ‘are interwoven with a deep longing from many losses along the way’. Yet those losses are the channel to recognize the beauty which is still present, and honors what is lost.”

The Coyote

Bridget Seley Galway

On my way home

in the quiet darkness before morning

in my aloneness

when I am connected to everything

I looked up from my shadow.

There you were in the near distance

Beautiful creature glistening silver in the moonlight

still as a statue owning the road.

Our eyes fixed upon one another,

measuring the space between us.

I stood still as you in this proof-

that all time is held in moments

before we lose sight of each other.

— Bridget Seley Galway

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