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.