Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome poet Deborah Reed Filanowski, a West Virginia native living in Pennsylvania, with two poems rich in imagery, mystery and wonder. “Dark Places” takes us deep into the woods, recalling the archetypal forest where Hansel and Gretel found a witch. Here a mother and her children find an abandoned car, as well as lilac and rosebushes, but no sign of a house. “Twilight comes early/ we scurry toward the light/ hoping to escape before we lose the path,/ we forgot to scatter breadcrumbs or white pebbles/ to show us the way home.” One of the children keeps a stone, which they return to the wood, throwing it from the edge rather than entering the twilight kingdom once again. The spooky ambience follows them home, finally dispelled by prayers for the lost family. “Out of Sight,” which was a finalist in our “Haunting” poetry contest, deals with the passage of time and how, over time, we are both the haunted and the haunter. Who among us has not felt an unease, “a presence, watching, waiting, resulting in an urgency to check on those you love”? Could that presence be someone looking out for us, or perhaps an aspect of us somehow outside of time? Deborah creates eerie moods, subtle nuanced rhythms and gentle alliterative music that has us shivering at our vulnerability and yet reassured that there is a larger reality beyond our understanding.
Read Deborah’s captivating poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Haunting” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Deborah Reed Filanowski was born and educated in West Virginia. She adulted in Pennsylvania where she was married once-upon-a-time and raised two daughters. She worked in substance abuse treatment primarily with women and their children in long-term residential programs. She is active in a writing workshop with Craig Czury, an internationally known poet with Pennsylvania roots. Her chapbook …and guppies eat their young was published in 2002 by Plan B Press. More recently, she has been published in Furious Gazelle, Aphelion, The Write Launch, and an anthology published by Clare Songbirds publishing as well as winning state and local awards.