Books by Judith
Ordinary Miracles celebrates the natural world; illuminating sweeping landscapes and up-close details in words and images. Nature has always been my church, and this book is a way to bring some of what I see in nature to everyone.
Ordinary Miracles
Queen Anne’s Lace, for instance.
Fields and roadsides snowy
with her multi-floret blooms,
flat topped, supported by green ribs
like an up-ended umbrella.
The hollow of the bloom
before it opens.
The way lacey spaces
fill up between segments
as the flower unfolds,
velvety purple cross
at the center.
Jewelweed.
Tender green leaves
turn silver underwater,
orange blooms delicate
as orchids. In autumn,
seed pods explode
when touched.
Chicory. Blue mandalas
at the edge of the asphalt,
nod in the breeze,
bloom into October.
Hidden in plain sight
along the roadside.
Ordinary miracles.
A DNA surprise in 2018 resulted in a group of poems written as I processed the news of a biological father (different from the dad who raised me), and four “new” brothers. I offer the poems in Grafted Tree to honor the complexity of family and the diverse ways family connections have manifested in my life.
~ Judith Prest
If Only
If only time could become liquid,
future would dance with memory.
Lost stories and my father’s smile
would live again.
Fluid time would ground us,
awaken sensibilities we can’t yet name.
Fluid time would meld
the origins and the healing of our scars.
When we wake and when we enter
the place where dreams are born,
boundaries erased past spills into now,
into then, a weave of bright ribbons.
I imagine that I hold my son, and see
my mother’s face when she first held me.
A complicated web of families unfurls
up and down the generations.
We carry more than blood in our veins.
~ Judith Prest
Loss has been my greatest teacher. Writing poetry has helped me survive life’s inevitable losses. I hope that Geography of Loss will help readers reflect on their own lives and appreciate the gifts and strengths that surface in their lives as they make their way through the rugged topography of loss.
~ Judith Prest
Loss
Suddenly life churns with brown silt
like a river after a storm.
Dark currents cut channels
rip new pathways
obliterate the banks I knew.
Each step now takes me deeper
no maps, no landmarks even
the stars shrouded.
On the river of loss
we can only navigate by faith.
~ Judith Prest
After
~ fifty years later
After the rape
the world tilted at
an odd angle
like a broken neck.
The sun still rose, I still
breathed, walked, spoke;
but there was an
impenetrable layer
between me
and the world
between me and myself.
No one could see it.
I was dimly aware that when
I tried to touch the surface of my life
it was like rubbing
a cheek numbed with Novocain.
My fingers can feel the skin
of my cheek
but my face does not
recognize the touch of my own hand.
~ Judith Prest
For nature photography and poetry lovers alike, Judith Prest of Spirit Wind Studios, is happy to announce publication of Elemental Connections.
How Rocks Dance
rocks rise
after snowmelt each garden
picked clean in autumn
reveals a new crop of stones
stones rise in stillness
their dance ponderous
to tones too deep
for human ears
stone speaks with a tongue
that has tasted fire and earth
rocks dance with water
then go still
Late Day Light
poems are like
telegrams from God
snaking like lightning
down through clouds
bubbling up
from the depths
flashes of light
bursts of steam and spark
from the core
from higher places
rearranging
molecular structure
revealing
the genetic code
of the soul