Marjorie Gowdy

Marjorie Gowdy has pursued careers that fed her writing. Recent poems are included in Valley Voices, Indolent Books, Clinch Mountain Review, Artemis, the summer and fall/winter 2022 editions of Anthology of the Writers’ Guild of Virginia, The Centennial Anthology of the Poetry Society of Virginia, the book Poetry Ink 2022 by Moonstone Press, and the 2022 book Quilted Poems. Her chapbook, Inflorescence, The Pasture at Rest, has been released by Finishing Line Press, March 2023 (Publisher Link). Also an illustrator, Gowdy lives, writes, and paints in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

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► Marjorie Gowdy's microchap & selected poems are available below. Download the single-page PDF by clicking the title.

Origami Microchap

Cowgirl by Choice

Click title to download microchap

Marjorie Gowdy BioCVR Cowgirl 2023

Cover painting: 'North Valley'

by author

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This Girl

Chose country life
Neighbors through fences
Naked down river
Cattle on the lee side

Jersey Barn

Plugged-in metal radio
half packed in the corner.
Country songs, over and over.
When the praying comes on, we leave.

Flip Side

I hurt people
prices exacted deserved.
Kindness is a goal.
Better now with hormones gone.
Mother Guernsey first foray out,
saucer swimming eyes.

Running Coos

Spring peeps, ridgeway winds,
lights off, stars up.
New moon and old Venus.
A bellow rises. Birth.
I watch. Soggy hairy sienna calf wiggles.
Her bellow softens. She licks him
as he stands.

At Willow Rocks

Three stones halfway up the mountain perch
as thrown down by a hapless god

Two for feet, the large black rock languishes
balances

The Longhorns linger nearby
on days of bitter dreich

They loll in rocks’ shadows
mornings when light flicks the ridge

Rocks cattle horns fields river
free fearless clean forgiven

Accipio

Your family Accipitridae
Knew the originals
Keen natural folk

They wore your black/white feathers
Shared the hunt
Knew your gods

Now on their paths you fly
Accepting this old woman’s
Quest for forgiveness

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Poets