This June 2021, guest editor Lane Henson features 4 of Duluth Minnesota’s many fine poets.
The music of love is sung so delicately in Katrina Pierson’s poem, Mo Cheol Thú. As the piece progresses, we see how the song sweetens – is strengthened – as love matures. The music exists even in mundane tasks and Katrina reminds us of this – that small things carry weight.
Lane Henson
Mo Cheol Thú (You are My Music)
by Katrina Pierson
In Ireland, they say
Mo Cheol Thu,
“you are my music.”
Just this morning, I woke you
to the sound of a new bird.
You are my nuthatch
chickadee, yellow sun
sky of my eye, your hands
a sort of religion. The way
you hold my head like
an old book, the way
you turn my feather pages.
The way you eat a sandwich,
tighten a bolt, walk so lightly,
even with all those medals
around your neck.
Our days are filled now
with making grocery lists,
wiping down the bathroom sink,
cleaning dead mice out of the trap.
But you still pull my head into your chest
when I wake with a startle at night.
And in the morning
when you leave for work,
you look back one last time
to see if I too, am looking back at you.
***
Katrina Pierson is a mama, multi-disciplinary artist, entrepreneur, and yoga teacher living on the edge of an enchanted forest in Duluth, Minnesota with her partner Rod, children Jack and Norah, and a pair of wild, striped kitties.
“Mo Cheol Thú” by Katrina Pierson appears here with permission of the author.