Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming poet Gillian Freebody of New Jersey with two illuminating poems about the viability and preciousness of life. In “Vacant Sanctuary (Ars Poetica #1),” her young son finds a baby bird fallen from its nest at the local park. “The quarter-sized hatchling on the pavement/ is curved as a newborn cochlea—/ painful in its pink raw scrub of the just born.” As she hesitates, thinking about how she might transport the tiny chick and where, the janitor arrives and ends all possibilities for rescue, leaving Gillian and her son feeling a solemn guilt which cannot be dismissed. We have all witnessed moments of casual cruelty and disregard for life, be it animal, plant or, yes, human, but Gillian reminds us that it is no less shocking for its familiarity. Aside from being an engaging story, the poem is full of alliterative music and carefully chosen words that demonstrate empathy and hint that this empathy is not enough. “Harvesting Butterflies” makes an analogy between butterfly cocoons and IVF embryos. “Yes, I whispered, wondering where lost embryos go,/ the ones who trip on their way to the mosaic table,// my desire to see them palpable, wild, panicky/ as the ill-formed butterfly I gingerly placed on the sugary pineapple.” Which is more cruel–to save what may not be viable or to discard what is imperfect? It’s a difficult choice and either way there is some degree of risk and guilt.
Read Gillian’s perceptive poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Vulnerable” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Gillian Freebody, a veteran public school writing teacher, is thrilled and grateful to find a home for her work in Synkroniciti’s Vulnerability issue. A workhorse by nature, Freebody put her own writing aside for many years to teach thousands of students and her own two children. She jumped back into poetry’s saddle during the world’s lockdown in 2020. Silver linings to a very difficult time, poetry and poetry workshops re-entered Freebody’s life like a salve. There are blessings everywhere, and sharing her work with readers in Synkroniciti is one in Gillian Freebody’s life.