January

Loretta Diane Walker

January 19, 2021

Is a caterpillar,

slowly starving,

a pupa cocooned in silky promises,

a wingless creature

craving flight.

Isn’t this the transfiguration,

unfurling tale of a New Year?

To consign our yesterdays

to cinders and dust,

to become a servant of hope,

unseal faith from its belly?

Loretta Diane Walker, an award-winning poet, multiple Pushcart Nominee, and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry, for her collection, In This House (Bluelight Press). Loretta is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has appeared in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies throughout the United States, Canada, India, Ireland, and the UK. She has published five collections of poetry. Her manuscript Word Ghetto won the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and earned a MA from The University of Texas of the Permian Basin. She teaches elementary music at Reagan Magnet School, Odessa, Texas.