I recently created a new page called The Poetry and Themes of Iris Lennox, which explores some of the recurring imagery, spiritual landscapes, and questions that continue to shape the work.
The page traces themes of resilience, voice, desert geography, memory, theatre, and the sacred hidden inside ordinary life. It also gathers together several poems that have become central to the collection over time.
I sit on the splintered bench
where the trail drops close
to the river’s edge,
one boot untied,
laces dark from morning grass.
The wood pricks through my jeans
only when I swing my legs
so I have to choose between
comfort and carefree—
the mosquito zigzagging
around my wrist
reminds me to
slow down.
Below me, water folds over stone,
slides around a half-sunken branch,
catches for a second
on something I cannot see,
then keeps moving.
A world within a
world
within a
world.
Each with its own
beginning, middle, and
end.
I rest my elbows on my knees
and watch cottonwood seeds
land on the surface,
play Russian roulette
with the current and sometimes lose.
But sometimes they win.
There used to be an island here
but now
only swimming for fish
and food for one crane whose beak
was made for moments
like this.
Across the bank,
a sycamore leans like a dancer—
if I tried that move I might hurt myself.
But the sycamore—
graceful,
roots half exposed,
holding a wall of mud
through another season of rain.
What happens here at night?
Does the dancer feel lonely?
I run my thumb
along the groove
someone carved into the bench
years before I found it.
There used to be a heart
scribbled here.
Was it time
or circumstance
that rubbed it away?
Where do all the lovers go
who leave their hearts
on benches
in trees
and in one another's hands?
The river keeps carrying
branches, leaves, foam,
the occasional flash of silver,
and twenty feet downstream
a man in a fishing boat
has a pole for an arm,
a hat for eyes,
and a dream I cannot see—
I stay on the splintered bench
swinging my legs
watching the sunlight
feeling the shade.
—Iris Lennox
literary pen name of Jill Szoo Wilson
This one did not arrive gently.
The edges remember something—
a pressure,
a folding back,
as if each petal had to argue
for its place in the light.
Nothing about it is smooth.
The ruffles hold.
The color deepens where it was once hidden.
Even the softness has weight to it.
You could say it opened.
But that would miss
what it endured to become open.
There are days
the sky lowers itself without warning,
and everything living is asked
to stay.
No explanation is offered.
No promise of outcome.
Just weather.
Still, something in the root
keeps drawing what it can.
Still, something in the stem
lifts what it has been given.
And when it is finally visible—
the pale, steady unfolding—
no one sees the storms.
Only the shape they left behind.
Only the quiet fact
that it did not close again.
Only the way it stands
as if the breaking of it
was never the end.
—Iris Lennox
Iris Lennox 