POETRY
Secrets
By
Some thrive in an arbor of privacy
like wisteria.
Others rot in the dark
long for the eye’s regard.
18th century women wore brooches –
miniature paintings of secret lover’s eyes
set in gold, surrounded
by seed pearls and amethysts.
For some secrets
there’s a teller and receiver.
Think of a seesaw,
level before the telling
And then
the secret revealed
Whose end
drops?
Ellen Goldsmith is the author of two chapbooks—Such Distances and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect, which won the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center 1997 chapbook contest and was described by Dennis Nurkse, the contest judge, as an “incandescent collection.” “The Secret of Life” from Such Distances was read by Garrison Keillor on Writer’s Almanac. A resident of Cushing, Maine, she is a professor emeritus of The City University of New York.