Zan Poetry

 Welcome to Zan Poetry!

My name is Suzanne “Zan” Green, and I live in San Antonio, Texas.  Every morning, I write. I write because I’m awake, and my mind is curious. If a poem ends up telling me something, I’ll often share it.  You could call them nature poems.

 

I haven’t always been a poet, but I’ve always been an artist.  As soon as I could pick up a pencil, I taught myself to draw.  My mum’s house in England where I grew up, is covered in my pen and ink drawings, particularly birds.

 

Poetry came to me around age 50, during a prolonged darkness, but also transformation.

 Following my Heart
It all began when I came across a door that I hadn’t seen before.  And before I knew it, I’d read the sign, and opened it.  Like entering a parallel Universe, I would be gone for eight years.
 

It was love that took me.  But in the words on love from the prophet, Khalil Gibran:  “Even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth, so he is for your pruning”.  

 

Love tested me, and left me questioning everything that I thought I knew.  And I struggled for the truth.  Ultimately, it led me to the altar, the place my soul had been calling me to.

 Realization

Then one night, I stumbled into a group of local writers at Mad Hatters tea house, including the learned poet, Fernando Esteban Flores, and I began to write.


Amazingly, poetry had come to me as a way of healing myself.  Searching for words, recalling simple images, helped me to begin the impossible.


In 2019, I took most of my ‘puzzle’ poems, and grouped them into a collection, naming them ‘All Things Holy’.  But I still wasn’t back.  My heart called me outdoors, and back to nature, where I wrote the poems of Afterword, mostly while walking along the river near my home in Southtown.

 Soulwork

In 2020, while working on a third collection I’ve subtitled New, my poems found their true voice, and the way in which they wanted to be heard.  For mirrored in my own suffering, was the suffering of others, particularly our more-than human family.  Inside their suffering; a message for us all.

 

Incredibly, I never planned this journey; it simply happened, because I said yes to love.  The poems of All Things Holy tell about my soul journey; not the descent, but how I learned to see in the dark.  And in writing them, they told a story.  A love story for the Earth.

 

Amor

How the human heart

Yearns, its solace


Even coldest to their knees

But not for the timid


Love’s no cozy walk

Neither coddling or soothes


Love is a fire

Splays the heart open


Flesh from bone

Only then, that place 


Of utter desolation

Soul finds union

Endless Summers

it was the dove’s 

fluted summons

which lured outdoors

those endless summers

walking in grandpa’s 

flower garden

 

their lofty stems

towering above us

and sitting  a wall

snapping snapdragons

dreaming the expansive 

dream of summer

 

sun-bleached 

softened by the sea

the illusion belying youth

that all of life will feel this way

that growing up

will never happen

 

and those we love

never leave

 

Knowing

Spiraling was how they met.

Still giddy, they built a platform,

and every day, as the sun warmed,

they hopped a draft, and circled

downwards, to where the trout lived.

 

The trout wriggled in good health, but

unnoticed were the workers; mollusks

sifting, plants and algae synthesizing,

caddises recycling.  Humans landed,

and they built a town, and though not

 

deliberate, chemicals were released.

Tossed onto streets, all kinds of trash,

soda cans & grocery sacks, and when

it rained, run-off…until due to their

deprivation, the workers died.

 

No more lovebirds either.

Poetry Books by Zan

all things holy zan poetry

All Things Holy

It was easy for love to take me. My soul had a message, All Things Holy.

 

In this first book, I am hit by lightning, and have to begin again, learning new ways of being, and with a different voice.

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All Things Holy: Afterword

In the face of a sunflower, a sparrow, and a snake sunning on a rock, I discover that despite my struggles, I am not alone.

 

We are surrounded by family. Their pain is our pain; also their sheer joy of living.

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All Things Holy: NEW

It feels like we’re falling.  The world as we know it is unraveling, and in its place, something different.  Nothing is independent; we move together like a tide.

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Read More

Books Available Soon

Feel free to leave an email for updates on availability.