DEB BAKER

SPRING ISSUE #08 FEATURED POET

Deb Baker lives on the ancestral homeland of the Pennacook-Abenaki people, now called Concord, New Hampshire. A longtime poet, in 2021 she became a “COVID quitter,” resigning from an all-consuming job as a library director. She now works four days a week at a hospital, volunteers for faith and climate justice organizations, and writes. Her poems have appeared in journals including Bellevue Literary Review, Third Wednesday, Spire, Naugatuck River Review, Hawk & Whippoorwill, and Envoi. Since childhood, she has felt connected to her kin in creation, who appear along with her human relatives in many of her poems. 

LONG MARRIAGE

Lots of people have
written about the secret
to staying married or how
beautiful long marriage is.
To me it’s not easy to explain.
But if I had to say, it’s a little bit
like the dawn, how light seeps
into the darkness, growing
imperceptibly brighter every
minute, so that if you look away,
maybe to brush your teeth, or start
the coffee, when you come back,
you see—oh, it’s morning—and yet
a star or two, or the moon, still gleam
in the ever-lightening sky, and other things
surprise: how the sun beams into
the woods, how persistent birdsong is,
how every cloud is different, how every
once in a while something unexpected
happens, like a fox crosses through
the back yard or a hawk lands
on a nearby tree or a woodpecker
cries out in its wild voice.