Laurie Klein Reads Lunula

Editor’s Note: “Poems to Listen By” is an audio series where over time we will explore some of the themes in the Poet Laura checklist, as well as Tweetspeak’s “Generosity” theme throughout 2021.

Speaking of generosity, in December we love to make some of our patron-only content public as a gift to the world! Please enjoy this edition as a gift from Tweetspeak Poetry.

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Poems to Listen By: Moonstruck 06—Lunula

Presented by Laurie Klein

Audio Script:

Welcome! This is “Poems to Listen By.” I’m Laurie Klein. Thank you for joining me today for our new series: “Moonstruck.”

The moon has retreated from earth nearly eight feet since my mother brought me into this world. She and I used to star-gaze from the makeshift window seat she created in my bedroom. Moonlight sketched a trembling path across the small lake just beyond our yard, and Mom would recite a poem or sing a lullaby.

My mother made comfort real. Mystical. Luminescent.

Poet Ross Gay remembers the feel of his mother’s hand cooling his brow when he had a fever. He compared her presence to moonlight spilling across “the laced hands of a nest.”

Can you picture your mother’s thumbnail, or the nail of someone else who comforted you during childhood?

Poet Susan Cowger, currently battling a version of the disease that ravaged her mama, writes about the half-moon at the base of her mother’s thumbnail.

Lunula

I have my mother’s thumb
spare flesh binding a stout knuckle     the nail
square     with a distinct ridge

running the left side     O half-moon o’ self
you wax and wane like she did     managing
need     delirium     the lusty cry of earth’s lullaby

Yes we suffer     life long and hard to finish
she in me neatly embedded
to the end     like a hymn that holds on

Let’s salute mothers and moonlight, healing and wonder, with this paraphrased line by novelist Laura Morelli:

Friends, may the air that surrounds you be luminous, “cool as moonlight making its path across a secret lagoon beneath your window.”

You’ve just heard “Lunula,” by Susan Cowger. I’m Laurie Klein. Thanks for listening.

Photo by Vanessa Porter, Creative Commons license via Flickr. “Lunula,” by Susan Cowger. Used by permission. “C’mon!” from Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross Gay. The Painter’s Apprentice, Laura Morelli. Audio and script by Laurie Klein with thanks to Pat Stien for direction. “Simple Gifts” (public domain). Musical performance, recording, and mastering, by Bill Klein.

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Laurie Klein

Laurie Klein inherited her mother's passion for reading aloud. Despite mispronouncing "manure" in Mrs. Englebert's 4th grade class—to hooting derision from classmates as she read Charlotte's Web—she later pursued Theatre Arts at Whitworth University, in Spokane, Washington. "Can you teach me to play 100 characters?" she asked. They did. To this day, Professor Emeritus Pat Stien (now 93), continues to mentor Laurie (soon-to-be 69). As with writing, one never masters the art. Laurie's performance credits stateside and abroad include plays, one-woman shows, storytelling events, poetry readings, audiobooks, videos, and spoken word recordings for albums and public radio.

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