JENNIFER PHILLIPS

FALL/WINTER 2022 ISSUE #05 POET

Jennifer Phillips is an immigrant, a gardener, grower of Bonsai, priest, and painter, and has been writing poetry and prose since the age of seven. Phillips grew up in upstate New York and has lived in New England, New Mexico, St. Louis, Rhode Island, and is now back in Massachusetts having graduated from Wellesley College and Andover Newton Theological School. Phillips’ spiritual/metaphysical sense and writing life have always been rooted in landscapes and their infinite changeability.

OSPREY

Lifting from its sticks
the bright flame of the osprey’s body
rides on wide, dark wings—

and in me, praise,
like the hand of a blind woman stretching out
to know and to caress the unseen world, declare it good.

What seemed a muddle of shadows
spreads itself, in perfect form, on air

rising
on the stair of light
toward what we cannot see.