Peggy Turnbull

Peggy Turnbull is a retired librarian who was inspired to write poetry when she returned home to the U.S. Midwest after spending decades in Appalachia.

Her poems have been recently published in Ariel Chart, Writers Resist, Verse-Virtual, Solitary Plover, and the Wisconsin Poets Calendar.

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► Peggy's microchap & selected poems are available below.

Origami Microchap

Rocking Chair Abstract

Peggy Turnbull CVR Rocking Chair Abstract

Cover collage by Jan Keough

Every microchap

may be downloaded

for free

from this website.

Rocking Chair

No one sat on the creaky rocker
to watch our black and white TV.
Its noisy squeaks annoyed us.

No one told us that Grandmother
found the chair in an abandoned house
without walls, while Grandfather
panned for gold. She spied
a grim-grey rocker on a dirty floor,
restored it by hand with cane,
needlepoint, stain, railroaded
it east for our comfort
on squalling nights.

We didn’t understand the music
of its dry joints. Harsh songs.
Eerie winds. How little
we knew of desolation.
Of those who loved us, far away.

●

Evening Abstract

Soft, slow flakes descend
like jazz piano. I study
the offering sky, feel
its gentle empathy,
how it lures me
to the downy sidewalk,
unmarred by blower
or boot-print. I shuffle
through soundless streets
while day leaches light.
Mother Sky casts a mantle
over sleeping roots,
corms, rhizomes.
How silent, their shelter.
How intimate, this night.

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