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Editor’s Note: Area writers were invited to submit poetry and/or prose to Studio B Art Gallery’s summer project “The Three Bears.” Writers were challenged to respond to the meanings of the words “bear” and “bare,” the Bear Fever sculptures or an aspect or theme from the fairy tale “Goldilocks & the Three Bears.” Their poetry and prose responses will be published in coming weeks in The Boyertown Area Expression digital news site (boyertownareaexpression.town.news). We hope you will enjoy the wide-ranging responses to the challenging theme.
Four sonnets by Theresa Werba*
- The Word-Birth Sonnet
(A sonnet about the creative process of “bearing” poetry)
I gave birth to a poem the other day,
I labored for twelve hours in a rhyme,
I centered, conjured, wombed, throbbed, then gave way
To empty out the fullness of my time.
As in the waves and ebbs and flows of life
By blood and pulsing, bearing down its course,
I think, I gestate; for the pangs of strife
Are sperm to my ripe, beating ovoid source.
Oh I am aching! So intense are all
The squeezings and the earnest tides of pain;
I move about, then settle in to cull
With open heart my brain canal again.
For writing is the labor of the mind;
And I have birthed my children all in kind.
The Rise of Fall
(A sonnet about “baring” (and “bearing”) the effects of aging)
There were such pretty flowers in the spring:
The fragrant colors of a verdant time;
Such fresh potentiality, sublime
In all the loveliness that they did bring.
Then summer issued forth a deep wellspring,
Maturely ripening, where vines would climb
And trees begin to bulge. This is the prime
Of life, when growth will dance, and sway, and sing.
But autumn is the time of now. I stand
Amid the harvests and the fruit. The change
Between the then and now, it leaves me jaded;
I barely have the bearings to withstand
This person of today. Indeed, how strange,
How much the beauty of the past has faded.
My Journal
(A sonnet about “baring” my soul in writing)
Within my world there is a sacred place,
Where I can hide and then reveal my heart;
Where thoughts and feelings go, and become art;
It is a sanctuary, hallowed space.
Creating something new and touched with grace,
I put my mind to pen, and then impart
My soul's outpourings through my mind, to start,
Then show my whole raw self with open face.
And when complete, I then perfect my words,
And get them ready for the world to see;
I take them from these pages, then display
Them out for those who read, and hear. This girds
Me up for naked vulnerability.
Indeed, I offer all I am this way.
Self-Portrait
(A sonnet about the mirror “baring” one’s aging self)
An aging, slowly fading entity;
A greying heart and changes of the mind;
The autumn time of life has come to me,
And I am quite surprised at what I find.
For I am still the same as I have been—
The ball of intense passion full inside;
The person that I am is still within,
Though sometimes I do feel that part has died.
For yes, I have the fire, but its flame
Is flickering and smoldering away;
In many ways it will not be the same
As when full fire forced its light on day.
For change of life's a curiosity,
For what I was, and am, and am to be.
*Theresa Werba is the author of eight books, most recently What Was and Is: Formal Poetry and Free Verse and Finally Autistic: Finding My Autism Diagnosis as a Middle-Aged Female. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Scarlet Leaf Review, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Spindrift, Mezzo Cammin, The Wombwell Rainbow, Fevers of the Mind, The Art of Autism, Serotonin, The Road Not Taken, and the Society of Classical Poets Journal. Her work ranges from forms such as the ode and sonnet to free verse, with topics ranging from neurodivergence, love, loss, aging, to faith and disillusionment and more. She also has written on adoption and abuse/domestic violence. Werba is the joyful mother of six children and grandmother to seven. Find Theresa Werba at www.theresawerba.com and on social media and YouTube @thesonnetqueen.
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