2011 Vermont Senior Poet Laureate
Regina Murray Brault

Regina Murray Brault, 73, succeeds herself as a returning champion. The 2011 Vermont Senior Poet Laureate. won her state's SPL titles in 2009 and 2010, and the National Senior Poet Laureate Award in both 1996 and 2010. Regina is a retired homemaker from Burlington. She leads The Cherry Lane Poets monthly workshop in Burlington. Regina is a widow with three children and six grandchildren. She has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her sign is Aries.


STAR GAZERS

Lying flat on my back
crushing dew-sprinkled webs
spun in darkness
like enemy tents set up in shadows
I am along for the ride
clinging to this spinning globe.

I search for answers
in old stars of ancestors
and for promises
in those newly born of cosmic vapor
and miracles.

The moon looms above me --
no more a mysterious face
but a place where men in uniform
have left their footprints
in the ancient dust.

I shiver to a wind
that has traveled long to find me
not meditating
like a monk upon a mountain-top
but here in a familiar place

where I free my conscious mind --
let it float in space
to bump into all other thoughts
and prayers that crowd our sky
with their confusion of tongues

while we -- earthlings all
weighed down by gravity and fear
fixed on the growling bears
in constellations --
star gaze from this raging rock.

We watch a falling star
not wondering who created it

but wondering what killed it.


Regina Murray Brault