Prose and poetry by Leen Raats
“What a better way to understand one another in this world but by the glimmering sparkle that unites us in this lighthouse?”
These are beautiful words from the editors of the Poetry Lighthouse. My poem Asphalt found a wonderful home at this creative writing community.
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What lies beyond these mountains
rests within me, deep and low
an unspoiled valley
where mythical creatures
with unearthly motives
lead late travelers to their destiny.
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My poem ‘What the universe wanted’ is part of issue 41 of The Pointed Circle, a magazine run by students and faculty members at Portland Community College.
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The universe wanted it that way
he claims, and everything happens for a reason
as we’re all made up of pieces of a primordial planet
overwhelmed with nostalgia for the cosmos.
He talks about black holes, the Big Bang
and the evolution from single-celled creature
to fish to mammal to man.
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My poem #Prague was published in Descant, a magazine edited by students from a university in Texas. It’s part of the 63rd edition of this paper magazine. Even more exciting: they nominated my poem for the 2024 Pushcart Prize.
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This morning I woke up in the dark.
With pain in my stomach and the voice of the radio newsreader.
Yet the day felt clean. Birds sang along the railway track.
At Brussels Central Station I saw a beggar with a bloodstained face
who no one seemed to see. I asked if I could help. I couldn’t.
Even though I know all about being invisible.
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You are safe now I’m here.
Muscles grown, back straight, fists ready.
No one will harm you.
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After all these years you still don't know
how to live, just like every night you
seem to have forgotten how to fall asleep.
It feels indeed like falling
into the arms of the unknown
that you should have been
familiar with by now.
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I'll just have to learn to live with it
said the specialist who casually diagnosed an illness
which he didn't explain, which I had never heard of
but from which I had been suffering for years
and that maybe it was partly my own fault.
I shouldn’t have been so eager to live.
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Leen writes 