Ana Doina

At thirteen

Peeling potatoes in my mother’s kitchen
              I never thought I’d ever get to be twenty.
                            Didn’t think of growing old, only of stillness

some sort of frozen time in the peeling of ages
             while the trees would endlessly
                             blossom on a full moon, the summers

would always bring seed-filled fruits
             and the autumn-carved leaves would forever
                              coil silently into a semblance of darkness.

About the Author

Ana Doina, a Romanian-born American writer living in NJ, had to leave Romania during the Ceausescu regime, due to political and social pressures. Her poems appeared in many literary magazines, anthologies, and textbooks. Two of her poems were nominated for 2002, and 2004 Pushcart Prize.