Second Life

In mid-life, Kyra Freeman writes passionately about re-emerging from a life of assisting others in their art to driving her own to fruition. Complete with startling black and white photographs documenting her trip, Freeman takes the reader by the hand and leads them from her front porch to the interior of her heat and mind and the secrets that make a woman--a human--matter.

POETRY'S MUSIC

Kyra Freeman's Second Life: Poems of Re-Emerging reads as if eye-lids open every morn, as bones begin to creak - rise. The sun remembers. Provinces adorn neighborhoods. Children hold hands. Dogs bounce tennis balls. Furniture awakens to doggy's wagging tail - "Outside! Outside!"

Magic rules, as a "second life" dances with a partner, baggage and all, back to the first of things when Time somehow started and words began to work the way they do. A meadow, by another name could be metaphor for a kitten to play with a moth that misses a flame in a daydream as one wonders if a house pet wants to be let out - to be, to see, to let something "personal" lead to syllables spoken with necessity. Self-portraits grow from one and two until the past grows thorns, shackles - until

"Kicking my ankles loose, I walked forward in a straight line towards the sun."

April rebels, "raining when it wants to."

The poet looks around in "vibrations of rebirth."

-- Shelby Stephenson was poet laureate of North Carolina, 2015-2018. His recent books: More (Redhawk Publications) and Shelby's Lady: The Hog Poems (Fernwood Press).