The Words the Abandoned Say~ By Dawn Cunningham

*after Rainer Maria Rilke

                                                            "It is better to heed a wise man’s rebuke
                                                            than to listen to the song of fools."
                                                                                       — Ecclesiastes 7:5

I don’t bother with me. They are more.
I say, “Do not know me.”
That’s me.
Not knowing is me. It all goes and saps
strength like dry bones,
always waiting for the wind (you know)—
that’s me.

Yes, this is so, they think: I am;
there is no other way.
Of course I have a mind.
The mind is reason. Mind is logic.
Sometimes I think I’ve gone societal.
(That’s me.)

Oh, it is a dance!
plié and bow as humbling and giving.
Good thing I never have to see me.
I will always come when they call.

This has never been strange behavior,
traveling between people, around the needs,
caring, out-of-touch.
That’s me.


Author Bio:
First and foremost, I’m a woman. I was a wife, and will be again in time (hoping by the end of this year—marrying my best friend). I have three living children out of five—Dunstan was lost three months before birth, Vincent recently passed after 2 ½ years battling the rare cancer PNET. He was 24. I have a BGS and an MA. The credentials did not make me a writer. I’ve been writing since I could take pen or pencil to a paper, even if the lines weren’t letters at the time. Gran’ma Ginny (an oral storyteller, keeping up with her Indian heritage) and I shared stories all the time. She was my inspiration. Today, I try to put her stories onto the paper. It is a difficult task.

I’ve had work appear online in Diagram and EWR, and in printed form in Confluence. A piece of my work has been performed by the Dance Collective of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I have done several readings on the campus of Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne and at the Three Rivers Coop of Fort Wayne in a series called First Fridays.}[=