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)