Exercise in Love:
Diane di Prima Tribute

The Ferlinghetti Girls outside Soapbox Gallery, May 2022.

Praise for The Ferlinghetti Girls!

"The Ferlinghetti Girls bring their love of poetry into the world, not just reciting or performing but drawing their audiences into creating their own poems and so find other ways to express what they feel. Terrific!"

-Ilka Scobe, art critic and author

An Exercise in Love

by Diane di Prima

for Jackson Allen

My friend wears my scarf at his waist

I give him moonstones

He gives me shell & seaweeds

He comes from a distant city & I meet him

We will plant eggplants & celery together

He weaves me cloth

Many have brought the gifts

I use for his pleasure

silk, & green hills

& heron the color of dawn

My friend walks soft as a weaving on the wind

He backlights my dreams

He has built altars beside my bed

I awake in the smell of his hair & cannot remember

his name, or my own.

Diane di Prima, “An Exercise in Love” from Pieces of a Song.

Copyright © 1990 by Diane di Prima. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.

Source: Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems (City Lights Books, 1990)