Synkroniciti is pleased to welcome back poet Lorraine Jeffery who resides in Utah. “Reunion Creek” remembers time spent in and around the water near where Lorraine grew up in Oregon. Over four lovely, understated stanzas shaped like a creek, hemmed in on one side, then the other, she reveals herself as a child traipsing over rocks and then wrapped in a quilt to go home, as a teenager gathering quiet, as a mother wrapping her children up to keep them warm, and as an elder. Nature is the constant. The final stanza brings us to the side of the creek, still able to navigate the slippery stones with care, “But there is no one to quilt-wrap me/ for the long ride home.” Age brings a sense of rich memories, but also a sense of loneliness at being left behind by past generations.
Read “Reunion Creek” in Synkroniciti’s “Family” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Lorraine Jeffery earned her MLIS degree in library science and managed public libraries for over twenty years but learned more about life from raising her ten children (8 adopted, two biological) than in any university classroom.
Besides winning poetry prizes in state and national contests, she has published over 200 poems in various journals and anthologies, including Westward Quarterly, Clockhouse, Rockhurst Review, Orchard Press, Naugatuck River Review, and Halcyone.
Her first book, titled When the Universe Brings Us Back, was published in 2022. Her chapbook, titled Tethers, was published by Kelsay Books in 2023 and her second chapbook, Saltwater Soul, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2024. She treasures time with her husband of sixty years.