Terri Glass is the author of a book of poems, Unveiling the Mystical Light, (Fisher-Dizick Publishing, 1991) and also The Song of Yes. Ms Glass has taught poetry writing in the Bay area for twenty years. She currently serves as Program Director for California Poets in the Schools and works as a poetry teacher to K-12 students in both public and private schools in the Bay area. She has been awarded grants from the Marin Arts Council and Poets & Writers to teach poetry in hospitals, senior centers and wildlife centers. Glass produced an award winning poetry and music CD called The Body of the Living Future and wrote Language of the Awakened Heart, a poetry guidebook for classroom teachers. She has been featured in articles in the Marin Independent Journal, the Pacific Sun, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her poems and articles have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Besides the Sleeping Maiden, To Honor a Teacher, Pencil of My Dreams, Moon Won' t Leave Me Alone, Paths to Learning and Science of Mind magazine. Her recent publications include ViVACE, California Quarterly, Fourth River, Chatham University Journal, Ginosko and upcoming in Monadnock Writer's issue on memory.
www.terriglass.com

Wind Turbines of Altamont Pass
 
Standing upright on barren hills
facing both sides of the freeway
catching the smog
spewing from automobiles
catching the wind in wild blades of steel
killing kestrels and red tailed hawks
generating energy for power grids
lighting the streetlights of grimy alley ways
lighting the traffic light that turns red.
You stop breathless at these colossi
the loneliness of gray metal against blue sky
and ask what part of you
feels like this–
what part of your loneliness
churns thoughts inside your head,
kills the flight of your imagination
but lights the dark alley ways of your doubts?
What part of you
has hardened to your own spirit
longing to find the nearby delta
where egrets wade and rivers converge?
What part of you stands on barren hills
thrashing your arms toward the universe
hoping that all this thrashing
does some good in the world?
                                                

The Miracle of Love
 
The bloody miracle of love
is what I want
where the “I” dissolves into
an acrobat of color
tumbling into a field of tulips
or the petrified fossils
of the Painted Desert.
I don’t want to leave this world
of shape and color.
I don’t want to leave
the oasis of the imagination
or the dream of the earth.
For I am made of clay and granite,
dandelion seed and a hawk’s feather.
I freefall, I rip open
and out pours a turquoise sky,

out pours rain clouds of grief.
I am all Northwest and Southwest,
a crisscross, an upright cross,
Jesus bearing the cross-
I want to return to
the bloody miracle of love.