Poetry & Poets

Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri

Grace is Maryland’s Tenth Poet Laureate. She has 21 books and chapbooks of poetry and 26 produced short-form and full-length plays. Her newest poetry publication is Showboat, 2019. Grace founded and still produces "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio, celebrating 43 years on-air in 2019. The show’s recorded at the Library of Congress and transmitted via Pacifica Network. She holds two Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (1993 & 2013), A Paterson Poetry Prize, a Pen Fiction Award, the Bordighera Award for Poetry, The CPB Silver Metal and received the Associated Writers' Program George Garrett Award for 2013.

ATLANTIS

For Bryan Christopher
 
Awakened by daily light,
I moved through a map of sounds
into the fold of the future.
There
in the periphery of
friendship was a man standing in
light between the trees.
How does he enter my story,
his hand on my shoulder,
walking beside me
all these years,
making art so we cannot
be destroyed by its opposite.
I move in the periphery
of his friendship into the
folding light.
The spectrum of colors
carried in his pocket
are horizons that say
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF,
words I did not know before,
leading me by the hand.