Connected Voices

Natalie Lobe

Glosa
…Send each of your words
like a last letter before execution,
a call carved on a prison wall.
you have no right to lie…
—Blaga Dimitrova, “Ars Poetica”

Think of your poem as a beacon.
Shine one word at a time
westward where licorice dolphins
play tag with ships and coral reefs
shimmer under surf.
Growing brighter toward
the oncoming night, let your beam
take note of all the dangers.
With the certainty of being heard
send each of your words.

Think of yourself as a keeper
surrounded by water,
watching strands of seaweed pearls
glisten under your searchlight.
Look hard at the creatures that swim,
cling to rocks, float in the ocean;
tomorrow they could be gone.
Make your every image live
for coming generations
like a last letter before execution.

If we are headed for destruction
the sea would hold to the last.
Can you envision the poison?
Every city a landscape of rubble
every forest smoldering ash.
Then imagine the whole
ocean oil-choked and stagnant,
pelicans shrouded in scum.
Speak! Make the grief in your soul
a call carved on a prison wall.

Shine the beam of your lantern
straight to the core.
Tell it clean—no time to revise;
how the salt marsh breeds life,
how sea urchins pulse,
how a coral reef lives and dies.
If execution looms in the shallows,
record your vision of “now,”
you are posterity’s scribe.
You have no right to lie.

ISBN 1-59661-044-1
47 pages/$9
Love dances though Connected Voices; Eros blazes under furrowed skins. Natalie Lobe celebrates our earthly life of dangers, blooms, quarks, generations; Seders of Ellis Island ancestors and giggling children; the defiant gleam of an unrelinquished wedding ring. Her poems reveal the magic in threadbare carpets, and invite us to fly.
Judith McCombs, The Habit of Fire

Natalie Lobe moves from Ellis Island to a Boston Marathon, from the canyon’s rim to Henrietta’s garden where zuccini and zinnas are nourished from the same slop pail. Like her lacemaker’s work the “lines and knots join hands/until you can no longer find/a single strand of thread.” Connected Voices is as strong and delicate as the lacemaker’s work.
Margaret Weaver, Escaping Words

In poem after poem, Natalie Lobe’s extraordinary vision has love planted firmly at the center— love’s delights, dangers, and urgent desire to connect us to the “underground streams” of experience. Her poems will slowly and magically awaken you to your own lost self, and you will rejoice.
Kendra Kopeleke, editor, Passager

“If you step off /you’re dead”/the ranger said—threads yank us back to safer beginnings; each step leads farther “Over the Rim” into dangers and marvels of our canyons. Images leap from crevices, amid limestone cliffs, we too “cannot imagine…a faultless love without…underground streams.” An earthy immigrant Bubba recalls our rich if disconcerting heritages.
Elisavietta Ritchie, Awaiting Permission to Land

Natalie Lobe turned from an economist and urban planner to poet. As a Maryland Poet in Residence, she teaches poetry in schools and other venues throughout the state. Ms. Lobe is an active spokesperson for the arts and for protecting Chesapeake Bay. She lives in Annapolis with her husband, Bernard.