Karen Paul Holmes - Featured During National Poetry Month

Karen Paul Holmes is one of my favorite rising poets. She is listed with Poets and Writers of America. Her poems have been published in Atlanta Review, Poetry East, Sow's Ear, Wild Goose Poetry Review and in several anthologies including Echoes Across the Blue Ridge and Sunrise From Blue Thunder. She is a resident of Atlanta and Hiawassee. Georgia.

Karen Paul Holmes 

DRAWN INTO CIRCLES

Last evening, I placed fresh towels on both dog beds, 

heard scratching and rearranging in the night. 

This morning, each dog lay curled

into a circle of towel 

like a bird’s nest.

How life loves

a circle: 

the sun

cups of tea

pizza, roses, embraces

wedding rings, cathedral domes

bells with fat notes radiating like ripples from skipped stones

the egg, the womb, the round opening, downy heads

suckling mouths, breasts, full stomachs, eyes filled

with delight for bubbles and bouncing balls.

Why do we box ourselves into corners

put our babies into rectangular cribs

build square houses and boxy buildings

drive cars to perpendicular crossroads

stare at newspapers, monitors, dollars

go to our rest in hard-edged coffins,

slowly lowered into matching graves?

It’s a comfort 

to imagine our rounded bones

becoming round bits of the globe, 

our spirits rising to orbit among spiral galaxies,

joining those who completed the circle before us.

by Karen Paul Holmes

published in

Poetry East, Spring 2010

Your Daily Poem, April 10, 2010

The Best of Poetry Hickory Reading Series (Main Street Rag) 2011

Reach of Song, Georgia Poetry Society, 2012