Diane Vogel Ferri’s full-length poetry book is Everything is Rising (Luchador Press). Her latest novel is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling (Atbosh Media) Her essays have been published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Scene Magazine, and Yellow Arrow Journal, among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Wend Poetry, Blue Heron Review, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). She has done many poetry readings locally. Diane’s essay, “I Will Sing for You” was featured at the Cleveland Humanities Festival in 2018. A former teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland. Her poem, For You, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net 2023

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Our Anniversary


It's our 12th anniversary.
Here's poem I wrote to my beloved a long, long time ago.
It's pretty lame in it's execution, but its truth remains:

My Unpoem
Thousands of words have bled through my hand
in healing expressions of painful years.
Hours spent seeking precisely the phrase
to vanquish the need in my heart.
In agony on countless nights
the pen would wildly run across my page
until finally I could lay it down in peace.

Now I plead with my brain
for some remnant of language
to satisfy the omnipresent craving
that saturates my heart and mind.
The minute by minute need
is to express fully in words
the experience of you in my life.

My mind is a vacuous space in my head
yet my heart is completely flooded
with a deluge of newfound joy.
And I must accept the unacceptable truth
that there is simply no syntax of words
good enough to describe you.

5 comments:

Ruth Hull Chatlien said...

Happy anniversary.

I relate to your poem so much. I stopped writing poetry for the longest time after I married. I was so used to my poems being an expression of angst.

I love the sketch. Did you do it?

Jenny said...

Very nice, Diane. It's wonderful to be married to the man you love.

Sandy said...

Maybe the poem is just spent. Kind of like a flower that's already bloomed and ready to be cut. Your poem is sweet, I'm glad you kept it so we could see it.

Happy anniversary!

Kathi said...

Hi Diane,

Kathi said...

Hi Diane, I liked your anniversary poem and also the drawing of you and Lou. Did you draw it? I saw the picture of our backyard. Glad you're enjoying the view. I feel so blessed to be able to enjoy our beautiful setting and all the wildlife that makes a regular appearance. The garden is stress relieving for me. I call it my meditation garden.