Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming back California poet, writer and visual artist Diane Funston with two contrasting poems. “In the Line” recounts an experience at the local food bank. “After standing in a line of anticipation,/ anonymity drops when faces remember/ who we were before, perhaps with roles reversed./ We unwind from the coiled reptile of need,/ a mingled skin of many colors, old and babe,/ able and disabled, cut off from visible society.” The camaraderie found in the line for free food surpasses that found in many societal institutions and communities. It is often those who have experienced need who are the most likely to share what they do have, who are most empathetic. Diane’s imagery is respectful, her alliterative, measured verses laced with the music of wonder and gratitude. The second poem, “Curtains Fluttering,” is a delightful, humorous retelling of finding new, unexpected love. “A kiss led to more/ your fingers still scented with garlic/ caressed my hair, my neck,/ it would be our first time together/ a few years from devastating divorces,/ writing new lives.” There is so much in society that kills off our ability to love and be loved, and Diane reminds us that you are never too old for the real thing. Her humor and openness are inspiring.
Read Diane’s refreshing poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Belonging” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Diane Funston has branches for bones and leaves for hair. A true Daphne at heart, she writes poetry and memoir along with visual art in media of collage, mosaics, and wool felting. She appreciates, as a hometown New Yorker, her home in California where gardening is an everyday adventure and possibility. She has recent poems or memoir pieces in or upcoming in Greenprints Magazine, Door is a Jar, Penumbra, t’Art, Bronze Books Climate Change, and Woods Reader, among others.