Terri Glass

Terri &  Lynwood student, Isabelle Grimm last year at Marin's annual reading at Book Passages in Corte Madera.

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website: www.thefoxpath.net

Terri Glass has been teaching poetry to both children and adults in Bay area for 20 years. She currently serves as program director for California Poets in the School Program and oversees Marin County as well as Area Coordinator. She has a passion for environmental sustainability and is active with the River of Words program, which fosters environmental awareness with poetry writing. She has been a grants recipient of the Marin Arts Council and Poets & Writers that has allowed her to expand her poetry workshops into alternative sites that include senior centers, hospitals, and wildlife centers. She is the author of Unveiling the Mystical Light, an award winning poetry & music CD, The Body of the Living Future and Language of the Awakened Heart, a poetry guidebook for classroom teachers. She is currently working on a book of prose and poetry about birds.



Sitting behind Robert Bly at the Palace of Fine Arts
 
As I sat behind you in the auditorium,
I had this urge to reach out
and massage your magnificent white scalp.  
My own father’s head being bald and greasy,
I occasionally massaged his Humpty Dumpty head
while he sat in his huge recliner chair.
But your hair sat on your head
like a whirl of San Francisco fog,
like a halo of Minnesota snow
so thick and beautiful.
I wanted to touch its roots,
feel your delicate thoughts surface
humming inside your skull.
I wanted my fingers to circle each of your temples
and bow before them.
Who are the guardians of your gate,
oh, Captain
and who are the guardians of mine?
                                   
Last night I dreamed of a mansion.
There were so many rooms,
and I could choose anyone I wanted to sleep in.
I want to sleep inside your skull.
I want to read you like Braille
hearing no sounds coming up from your gut,
just pure thought rising,
singing at the base of each hair follicle
while my fingertips pick up
these tiny Morse code messages
and through osmosis my body knows
what the guardians of the gate keep secret.
  
~Terri Glass                                                                                               
 


 

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