Welcome to Moondustwriter Thursday - Featuring Gay Cannon

I met Gay Cannon on Twitter where I have met many incredible writers who have become friends. I liken Twitter to a pub where someone walks in for the first time and doesn't know a soul; a person casually asks "what do you do?" - the next thing you know many of the people at the pub are talking about what they do, who they know, and suggest maybe "so and so" can help with the book or poetry site.

When I met Gay,we just eased into a conversation. She's like that. I never realized  how much we have in common. We obviously both share a love for the written word. She and I both went to University to study the Sciences. After two years, Gay was so in love with writing and literature that she became a Liberal Arts Major.Since then she has taught a class on just about everything.

Gay is quite the story teller. She has written a time travel novel; sadly it coincided with her husband's death. It seems that the novel is stuck on an old inaccessible disk (bet I could find someone on Twitter to help her with that disk.) Gay's husband was a talented man; one of his many accomplishments was being on the team at NASA that made the moon shots possible. Yes - I could go on about this multi-faceted woman.

What inspires Gay to write poetry?: The two subjects that carry her away into the poetry realm are nature and weather; her beloved Texas puts prose at the end of her pen. Gay has a way of making words do what she wants - a poetic magician of sorts. She has published much of her poetry in magazines over the years and hopes to compile all of her poetry into a book. 

I hope you enjoy Gay's poetry as much as I do.  

ENDANGERED

Gliding

Seagulls

Cry

In response to each wave’s spray

Salt

Sea

Tears

For the whooping cranes

That fly from Aransas Pass.

New

Hazy

Night

Why must they leave?

The rhythmic water

Slaps the white sand,

Brown and green reeds

Join all nature to play this symphony.

Can it not preserve the ballet,

These shadowed cranes against

A bone-white porcelain moon?

SYLVANIA

There’s no one as old as we are, sir, or as young.

We ride horses in the forest and their manes stretch away

from us becoming like the trunks of trees.

My husband died and left me feeling not as old

as my grandchild’s birth.

I grab the mane and ride toward youth.

You had no markers in that wasteland to measure out your age.

I think you’re young, as young as when we mounted, sir,

but when I glimpse you now your face folds in against the bone

like knees upon the Cypress trees and still we ride

to a place we know where flowers once would open to the sun

and need no shade.

Then your pace was quicker, sir, and

your face a flower paled by moon.

We seek beginnings in autumn and ride

wild and unbridled now over burnished leaves.

We reach for life and find its span,

aging as the trees we’ve known.

NOCTURNE

I cannot find you in the summer’s leaves,

Or hear your music in the moontime’s song,

The shadow shapes become the faceless breeze.

Across a cubist’s landscape of elm trees,

On midnight’s wave, I hear the steeple’s gong,

I cannot find you in the summer’s leaves.

When emerald stars through satin dreams, increase

Their spell and thus my fantasy prolong,

The shadow shapes become the faceless breeze.

Of velvet indigos, the night then weaves

Its magic carpet that bears me along,

I cannot find you in the summer’s leaves.

In caravels I sail Aegean Seas

And touch the columns that I dance among,

The shadow shapes become the faceless breeze.

At last within my grasp No, it deceives

Me, and I reach to find the vision gone.

I cannot see you in the summer’s leaves,

The shadow shapes become the faceless breeze.

You can read more of Gay's fantastic work here

Tweet Gay when you get a chance @beachanny
Thanks so much Gay for sharing your beautiful poetry.

© Gay Reiser Cannon. All Rights Reserved
Photos courtesy of Flickr:
Dark Seascape: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/3103381523/
Wild horses: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bouldair/4963835069/