DICK WESTHEIMER
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared or upcoming in Whale Road Review, Rattle, OneArt, Abandon Journal, and Minyan. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig.
When you tell your children
about me, tell them I was never scared,
that I said the blessings
every day, lit the candles like my mother
did, even when what was around me was
evil as Eden.
I am also utterly enchanted with creating something I cannot control. A poem may start as me trying to solve a problem (much like a math equation), but ends up running off into the woods or stars or the nucleus of an atom or under the soil of my garden. It turns figs into mortality plays, stones into flowers, the darkness of deep space into what may be G-d.
August 4, 2024