This week's Poet of the People is Ruth Nicholson.
I run into Ruth at all the best poetry events. Her unassuming, friendly, and soft spoken nature belies the respect she has earned within the poetry community. Her poetic voice conveys her observations and craft with a gentle, humble, economy of words that many of us wish we possessed. She is always welcomed with smiles and respect at journal and anthology release events. She is a gift to our community of words and I look forward to hearing her share her poems the next time we meet.
~Al Black
Ruth Nicholson became a South Carolina resident forty-five years ago after receiving her formal education in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. She worked for Historic Columbia Foundation, Lexington County School District Two, and finally, Richland Library. Ruth is a member of the River Poets writing group. Her poems have been published in Emrys Journal, Kakalak, Jasper, several volumes of Fall Lines: a Literary Convergence, and American Journal of Nursing, among others. A memoir essay appeared in Fall Lines X, and three of her poems are included in the new anthology Coast Lines. In 2024 Ruth received the Scotty Davis Watson Prize and the Forum Prize from the Poetry Society of South Carolina. She lives in West Columbia with her husband and an eccentric tuxedo cat.
Doctor’s Orders
Take your creaking joints and fallen arches.
March them up and down the hilly streets
in circuits of your neighborhood.
Maintain your vigor with a healthy pace.
Ignore stares from the “cool dude”
who nurses his first cigarette of the day
before he lolls with the first of many beers.
Years from now, if he lives that long,
he will trundle his aging flesh and bones
in the same shorts you wear, the same
supportive shoes and socks.
Bask in morning birdsong as you walk.
Inhale the dimming moon and climbing sun.
Exhale frayed ends of last night’s dream
and be your own best medicine.
Only the Children
An autograph rides the wind
on the underside of leaves.
Dew clings to its pen strokes.
If the sun shines, italics bloom.
Children find it etched
on the monarch’s chrysalis
and lips of daffodils.
It nests in the chambered nautilus.
No microscope brings it into focus.
It defies the graphologist,
frustrates the naturalist,
mystifies the scholar of runes.
Eyes open, they glimpse it.
Eyes closed, they feel
its letters rise to meet
their fingertips, like braille.
Even Lions
Watch and listen as our cat laps water
from her bowl, eyes half closed.
Even lions at a water hole
look and sound this innocent.
Paws that launch switchblades,
teeth that tear flesh
are the last things we think of.
We hear in the lapping
a ticking clock, the click
of knitting needles,
rain that gentles us to sleep.
We smile and keep our distance,
as if entering a church
where someone kneels alone.