A Bead Fell


A bead fell from her hand
   into the dust beneath her feet
      and formed an archaeologist's delight
         two thousand years in the future.

She carried water in clay vessels,
   made the mud, baked the beads,
      pounded the root, brewed the dye,
         cooked the beads and strung them.

A bead fell from her hand
   into the dust beneath her feet
      and slept under many generations,
         many villages, many lives.

She worked a field, cooked, cared for her
   home, had six babies, three survived.
      And she wore beads, her mother's,
         her grandmother's and her own.

A bead fell from her hand,
   a precious bead to me who has it now,
      a treasured touchstone of the ancient past,
         a real thing in this time of unreality.

A bead fell from her hand...
                            ...and into history.

Corrine Gurry
©1993 

Orchid

Poetic the orchid sits.
Silently beseeching me.
Sweetly, slyly, beguiling.
Nodding yes, softly.
As if happy to see me.
She smiles, breeze frisked.
Turns to see if I looked back.
I did.  


C. F. Gurry 
© 1998 

Peace

Harpooner! Stay your arm! 
Put up your harping iron 
and free the mammoth fishy beast 
to soar beneath the silent sea 
and sing it's song in peace. 

Corrine Gurry 
© 1978 

Sisters

Here I sit at
the Horn of  Africa
beading, my art
resting on my knee.
Are you beading too?
Then we are sisters.
It's good to meet you.
Come bead with me.

Corrine Gurry
© 1997 

A Cat Moment

Ohh!
There was a cat spirit
here just now


A passed on pet,
who's not gone yet,
but slips between
the shadows.

Loving us still and
not yet willing
to go.. a whispery
spirit we catch
out of eye corner,
fleeting as they were
once of foot.

A heartache,
a memory,
a smile...
a cat moment!

Corrine Gurry
© 1998 

Evening

As the Earth turns its face
from its birth, we, 
flesh that we are, 
sleep too that we might
refresh and arise
as the Earth turns its face
toward its birth.

Corrine Gurry
© 1971