Poem about Beat Poet Diane di Prima by Emma Lee

Emma Lee’s publications include “The Significance of a Dress” (Arachne, 2020) and "Ghosts in the Desert" (IDP, 2015). She co-edited “Over Land, Over Sea,” (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com.

The Strength of Flight Feathers
i.m. Diane di Prima (1934 - 2020)

Let her house be filled with feathers,
torn-off strips of paper with lines 
of poems. Let them drift into books.
She understood books and poets,
founded a press to publish Audre Lord
and others, knowing skin 
could become a parchment
on which to record a story.
Seeing City Lights as a lighthouse
steering poets into a community
where voices bore witness 
and were heard. She knew
poetry lived, evolved,
poems needed to be inhabited,
a relationship between artist
and reader, ephemeral as feathers
that could build a nest 
or scatter on the wind.