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GHAZALS
GHAZAL
Winston Plowes
Despite his temper, he never wrote in red
He would have lost if he ever wrote in red
His suicide note spoke of both lust and death
“All my lights went out,” the lover wrote in red
After the knife blade, their palms smeared the future
Death will us part, the blood brothers wrote in red
Your mother’s case notes clearly speak of madness
Barely legibly, the doctor wrote in red
“Winston will never amount to anything”
My final report – the teacher wrote in red
GHAZAL
Winston Plowes
Let’s celebrate “The day it rained”!
Yet sadly you just say, “It rained.”
You water down my yearning years.
Pruning back each new day – It rained.
Green shoots of love were drowned at birth.
You’re flattening the hay. It rained.
The old tin roof’s a xylophone!
And yet again you say, “It rained.”
Without my coat I struggle home.
I’m courting clouds of grey, it rained.
Your eyes witnessed beauty Winston.
As others looked away, it rained.
GHAZAL
Winston Plowes
No love lost around your letters
History tightly bound your letters
Thistle heads disguised as roses
Friendly faces frowned, your letters
Dark words piled in a dark corner
A discarded mound, your letters
Like the dying amaryllis
In my tears, I drowned your letters
Echoes rest in empty places
A faint distant sound, your letters
Inside the drawer without the key
Prying fingers found your letters
Bitter fruit grows in barren soil
Buried underground, your letters
Her ship will never dock Winston
Words have run aground, your letters
SYMBIOTIC POEMS
NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLIES
Steven Carter
velvet and blue cotton
modern medicine robe—
Blackfoot shaman
“It hurts,” Julie whimpers to the priest. “Would you please hold my hand?”
Much later, Blackfoot Indians would say that a killer spirit had been let loose in the mountains. Make that two spirits; but they were right.
naatsi aakii, naatsi kiyaayo
That night—an August night in 1967—is unusually dark, even by Montana standards: Mt. Grinnell and Heaven’s Peak are vague shadows against the starless, moonless big sky of Glacier Park. During an interview a week or so afterward, a helicopter pilot describes the attempted rescue as flying through curtains of black velvet. A Vietnam vet, he admits he’d never been scared flying a chopper until this night, when two 19-year-old girls lay dying somewhere below.
The girls—Michelle is the other victim—embark separately on an overnight camping trip, each with a male friend: Julie to Trout Lake, Michelle to Granite Park Chalet (the chalet is full up, so the kids have to camp a few hundred yards away, where the first grizzly finds them.)
Tourists in the chalet clearly hear the screams; someone waves a flashlight and yells down the hill, “Is anything wrong?” When would-be rescuers arrive, Michelle’s boyfriend—who’d been thrown out of his sleeping bag before the 500-pound sow dragged Michelle, still in her bag, into the woods—tries to follow the bear, only to be restrained. Twenty minutes later they find Michelle, scalped and barely alive.
At about the same time, near the shore of Trout Lake, a favorite grizzly hangout, Julie and her boyfriend are eating, then discarding, wild chokecherries (even though ripe, they’re too sour for inexperienced palates); then, a few minutes after retiring for the night, they hear odd snuffling sounds, like someone with a bad cold.
pak-ki-pis—tsi-o taa’ t-ts-pi
“It’s a bear,” Julie whispers, and just like that the big beast—another sow—is upon them, injuring the boyfriend, then concentrating on Julie who, like Michelle ten miles away, can’t get out of her sleeping bag. It takes two hours to find Julie, who loses too much blood.
In a documentary film made forty years later, a Blackfoot Indian named Steve—expert tracker and assistant to the Catholic priest assigned to the Browning Reservation—attempts to describe his feelings of that long-ago night. Halfway through the interview he chokes up, shakes his head, and the camera turns away. (Later the priest reveals that Steve had told him, “They’re home with their ancestors now,” before he could’ve possibly known there were two girls involved).
oki niksokowa
Julie is flown to Granite Park, where Michelle has just passed away, and where, as it happens, two doctors are spending the night. The priest holds Julie’s hand and tells her—the last words she would ever hear—“God is looking over you.” “I know He is, Father,” she murmurs; then her grip relaxes. Only then, holding a bag of plasma, one doctor looks at the other and both shake their heads.
ai yo kah
The filmmakers also interview Michelle’s parents. All these years later, the mother is too stricken to speak, and the father still looks in despair. But he says he can’t blame the bears for being what they are, and that he’s attempted to deal with the grief and loss by contributing to an environmental group dedicated to saving ursus horribilus from extinction.
nis-kum’-iks
dawn star—
the chopper
heading home
From the Blackfoot:
naatsi aakii, naatsi kiaayo (two girls, two bears);
pak-ki-pis—tsi’o taa’t—ts—pi (August, when the chokecherries are ripe);
oki niksokawa (hello to all my relatives);
ai yoh ka (she is sleeping);
nis-kum-iks (our younger brothers [animals]).
ERRAND
Steven Carter
My father-in-law isn’t the most sensitive of creatures. A cattle and wheat rancher, the unforgiving pragmatics of ranch life has coursed through his blood since childhood. And he can be blunt and crude with his fellows. I remember the car salesman in nearby Conrad, a recent throat cancer survivor clearly equipped with a voice box, so that his speech was guttural, echoic, and barely discernable. As he tried his best to extol the virtues of a new Plymouth, and to my mother-in-law’s infinite chagrin (she’d been there before), my father-in-law asked, “Something wrong with your throat?” On another occasion, the local pastor explained why he first started moving from state to state: “It was when I was called to the ministry.” “Who called you?” my father-in-law wanted to know.
. . . So I was surprised that July morning when he asked me, “Want to come along?” He certainly didn’t need me to help him drown a litter of kittens, our first morning chore. On Montana ranches, hundreds of miles from the nearest animal shelter, such things aren’t only expected, they’re necessary; innumerable wild cats running around constitute a major nuisance, and many attract coyotes.
I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect, but I couldn’t very well say no. I was at least thankful that my father-in-law hadn’t adopted a neighbor’s technique of picking up kittens one by one and smashing them against the barn door.
In the shop, where the kittens had been born—the mother was out hunting—he handed me a burlap sack, went outside, and returned with two or three heavy rocks. I put them in first, then the kittens, trying not to hurt them. We said little on the way to the small reservoir—my father-in-law was a man of few words anyway. As the flatbed Ford rumbled and rattled down a rutted dirt road, I could hear mewing from the sack at my feet.
sound of the creek
hay meadow—
second cutting
At the reservoir, he surprised me a second time. “Want to do it?” he asked. I certainly did not want to do it, but again I couldn’t say no. So I grabbed the sack, got out of the truck, walked up to the water—and hesitated. Except for one or two sparrows shot with a BB gun in childhood, I’d never killed anything. A warm wind from the south picked up as I listened to the mewing and felt the bag move slightly. Then I tossed it in the air, still hearing the kittens as it splashed dead center in the reservoir and disappeared.
Was my father-in-law testing me in some strange, minor way? Initiating me? I watched the bubbles from the sack diminish and finally cease. Then I turned.
There he was: leaning on the flatbed, his back to me, pretending to look assiduously into the distance, toward the fields of headed-out barley down east. I’ll be damned, I said to myself, as the wind blew harder and we heard faint rumbles of thunder. He didn’t want to watch.
day moon—
not yet grazed
young grass on the hill
THE WINDOW OF LIFE (excerpt)
For Jerome David Spiegel
Gerard John Conforti
I can view the spring flowers blooming in the garden across the street. It is a small garden, but with beautiful flowers. Today, there is not wind nor cloud in the sky. In April, the rains will come wetting the meadows of grass with flowers and weeds.
someone walked across the meadow tracks of footprints
Haiga by Emily Romano
THE HICKORY BENCH
Elizabeth Howard
Snowed-in, I stand at the window, torn between misery and beauty. Cold creeps under windows, sweeps baseboards, fluffs dust bunnies under the bed. On the other hand, the world is so beautiful I stand admiring. Trees and shrubs wreathed in white lace, snow piled in drifts, one an igloo, another, a polar bear.
A hickory bench sits near the fence so I can observe the meadow: deer and wild turkeys;
wildflowers (Queen Anne’s lace, daisies, Joe-Pye, ironweed); birds (cardinals, finches,
larks, bluebirds); the pond with cattails, herons, and frogs. From my window, I see
nothing moving anywhere in the landscape. Not even a red-tailed hawk watching for a slight shift in the snow.
Snowed-in, too, the bench looks cold and lonely. For a moment, I fancy it asleep under
plush eiderdown, waiting for spring. But experience tells me otherwise. While I am
preoccupied, battling dust bunnies, poring over books and keyboards, the bench keeps watch on the meadow—snowfall to snowmelt.
the hickory bench
ever viewing the meadow
first witness to the quickening—
peepers, sparrows, fawns—
even now the earth throbs
BEING THERE
Alegria Imperial
...it is the rhythm that's constant it seems and not the stillness—the way the wind pulls and withdraws and the way the leaves sway and retract or how the clouds gather into masses and then dissipate into air or is it merely the eye that misses the jagged movements and edges and catches merely that moment when the rhythm shows and reassures us as in the constancy of flowers even as petals begin to brown and curl in the edges and fall, stripping the branches of their name because all we recall is their being there as in moments we have flowed into still flow into like on our early morning walks
when
shifting tides —
the river unloading burdens
for us to decode
REFRACTED TWILIGHT
Alegria Imperial
…first time ever that twilight struck me as that almost sacred time when the day tears away to let night slip in today, how the bleeding sunset fades into lemon yellow to shell white so much so that facing west where the light seems to turn down as in a timer heartbeat by heartbeat, the houses, trees and flowers even weeds become solid walls of darkness—no punctured points on twigs, no dancing spaces between leaves—but haven’t I watched this on my daily walks long ago back in Harbor Hill but then, the roosting sparrows and the first star on tips of pines pulled my steps back to ruminate and settling in, twilight would be for us that time when
first star—
we turn down the darkness
on our own sky
Haiga Doris Lynch
SWIMMING TO ALASKA
Doris Lynch
We decide to drive to Alaska. We head through Oregon and Washington, enter British Columbia, and later traverse part of the Yukon. In B.C.the mighty Fraser River’s whitewater pounds below the highway. Beside it, signs advertise fresh apricots. They taste like the air: fresh, sweet, and delicious. Past Edmonton, we finally turn onto the
Alaska-Canadian Highway.
Everyday we take side-trips to lakes. After driving, I dive into each, relishing the silky feel of the water. Swimming a modified breaststroke, I stretch and contract my limbs while gazing at the knobbed mountains and pine forests. Some days I stare deep into the
turquoise water and discover giant rocks below. Sometimes, after jumping out of the lake, I take a deep breath, and then flipping legs over head, enter again, swimming as far down as I dare go—until my lungs ache, and I must surface again, desperate for air.
I learn the landscape by smelling each new lake’s individual scent and by feeling with my bare feet its black pebbles or grey sand. The locals greet us as though we are neighbors.
Little children approach my husband and me and ask for our names.
on lake’s shore children carve sand mountains
But we don’t only swim in lakes. We rush down hills into wild rivers but carefully test their waters before finding quiet eddies or places where we can ride the current safely downstream. At Liard Hot Springs, we arrive just after a burly grizzly has cleared every pool. But even in the hot springs, I slip my head into its black liquid. The only couple that
have remained after the bear-sighting yell excitedly, “Come up! Don’t dare stay under. Bruin may return looking for cooked meat.”
After crossing the border into Alaska, on the highway to Tok, we see signs for one more lake.At this boulder-rimmed cirque, for the first time I force myself to jump in—the air temperature has dropped considerably. But once inside, I feel as though I can stay forever. My skin adjusts to the cold swirling around me. My heart’s rapid beat begins to slow down. The water becomes my liquid skin.
Two weeks later, we fly to Nome. At a beach by the Bering Sea, the Eskimo kids frolic wearing the widest assortment of clothing: gym shorts, dungarees, a flowered dress, t-shirts advertising California Fried Chicken. No one owns a bathing suit. I dive under the waves, then leap out of the sea. Droplets of cold water splatter over my arms, breast and thighs. I spear my body into another wave realizing that this will be the last swim of the year because here a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, we’re already on the cusp of winter.
dog-paddling
in the Bering Sea—
looking for Asia
A FEAST
Giselle Maya
september day
this high room
all mine
for thinking dreaming
castles in the air
for planning
looking at the mountain
son and daughter how i wish to share this time
with you all daily things quite miraculous
making plum jam quince chutney
leaping through meadows with cat Anise four little eyes of two kittens white with russet spots looking
at me wondering who this creature is who puts out food and plays with them moving a peacock feather
along a small yellow rug just for the fun of it
i feel rich
yellow roses are in bloom
the clear spring’s
ceaseless flow
through autumn leaves
CONIFERS
(comprendre et communiquer)
Giselle Maya
a day of practice
a one and a half hour drive from the mountains to Avignon
to see my daughter and share a day of tai chi practice and lunch
we met in a public park with water ducks swans a picnic table
her students and I
a delicious potato and courgette salad I brought and others also had made special food to share
during morning practice I saw the sky through high leaves, breathing, letting go –
my daughter’s voice soothing and pleasant
all was silent, we stretched our bodies and minds content and at ease
later we drove to the river Gardonne which flows from the Cevennes mountains
into the Rhone
and found a spot of sand to practice in the afternoon
swimming
in the cool green river
you approach
just close enough
for me to see your eyes
shades of green
the wide river
ripples
tree shadows
skim the sand
a beautiful day flows by winding and full of
currents of learning, practicing, clearing away debris,
the artifice of mind by listening closely to the body
nothing more
CREAM
Carol Pearce-Worthington
squeak of the fan
the only cricket
she has
Her first born son. They beat you with sticks?
Somehow she knows. His head bleeds; his hair stinks of molasses. He wears boxer shorts found in the grass. Others moan in the darkness. He does not look back. Barefoot, he limps over gravel roads and along highways. Carefully he opens the screen door. Life will work for him now. Now he has a future. He even crawled through twice, twice. But he didn’t shout didn’t run, crawled real slow, while others around him buckled. So he has to be chosen; one of the cream guys. And there she stands.
Silent, arms folded. He wants her to be glad.
Victory, he whispers. Her face doesn’t change, doesn’t light up as it does when he gets an A in school. Blood trickles across one eye and down his neck.
on her knees
at prayer
hands so small
RABBIT HOLLOW
Carol Pearce-Worthington
It was like that then. Darkness catches my mother, father, and me in the car, and we don’t want to go right home so he says let’s go to Rabbit Hollow. No, she says. What is it? I ask. Just a beer joint, she says. He says nothing. It must sit on one of those dusty county roads among his childhood fields where the air carries a sweet smell of mowed hay and corn stalks sway under the moon. Our road tonight cuts a swath through moonlit hills, where headlights appear first as sparks, pass, then vanish. Rabbit Hollow? How far is it where is it? what is it? He will say no more. And so we head back home.
...last night together
stars sliding
down the other side
BOOM
Jane Reichhold
What’s that?
That noise?
Yes, it’s deep, like a door closing. Or banging shut.
I don’t hear it.
There it is again. The earth almost shudders.
That boom?
Yes, it is a boom. Now I don’t hear it. Wait. Wait it will come again.
Are you sure you heard something?
Yes! maybe you have noisy neighbors?
None are that close.
The boom was deep and loud so it probably came from far away.
There is no wind today so it cannot be from that.
Boom!
There! did you hear it again?
clear skies
the sea unable to hold back
the sinking moon
DAILY ROUTINE
Betsy Snider
A bright band in the east pushes against the dark sky, slowly expanding until the trees are sharp against the ribbon of road that unspools before her. Her bathing suit feels damp under her clothing, layered against the beginning of winter. The memory of yesterday's
swim lingers on her skin, the faint smell of chlorine now filling the car.
red eyes wide
white tail flickers
river like slate
She sheds her shell in the locker room, glides into the pool's embrace and begins her daily meditation, stroke by stroke. For an hour, she lives in each second as the sun begins its climb past windows that frame the lanes.
yesterday
koi flutter in the breeze
trees stand bare
ON A WOODEN BENCH IN THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
Charles D. Tarlton
I'm not too sensitive to color, not really. I don't use it with any
nuance that I know of. The form of the thing is more interesting to me than color. I take the color as primary - like, if it's the woods, it's green; if it's blood, it's red; if it's earth, it's brown.
—Cy Twombly
Scratches on the patina of ancient stones, flowers at the gravesite glistening in light rain, old posters on the wall—go into a pocket for later. Back in the studio they bloom in the heat. They are the largest canvases in the world; a mystic’s whisper of blood, words,
and flowers.
draw a single
line, a line to the edge
of the oceans
and the world. Draw it again,
and again, and again.
illegible
rouge in foreign script
scrawled there roughly
among chrysanthemums
is the artist still here?
Haiga Emily Romano
SEQUENCES
DREAM CATCHER
Ed Baranosky
Then in a thousand fold thought I could think
you out, even to your utmost brink,
and (while a smile endures) possess you, giving
you away, as though I were but giving thanks,
to all the living.
Rilke
the last Ghost Dance,
a medicine man’s lost dreams
buried in the north wind
barred by the black tree line
are long-departed
unfinished distances
still carry the long scars
of the last Ice-Age,
forsaken wounds buried
by the deep cold
permafrost shields
the unmarked trail
to the arboreal forest
a few dry branches
claw at the horizon
endless prairie marsh
worn deep by forgotten black
buffalo hoards,
ancient gullies scoured
by the vanished mammoths.
pine pitch
scent-stained hands
lift old stones
setting out a wide circle
to map the stars
to trap the four winds,
the voice of the grandfathers
imprinted still
by the prairie Windigo
untold by chance
the vision
quest stalks death
forsaking fear
ambition, furs, gold,
the unforged self
within the vast
presence, time erodes
memory, snow-blind
the dead settle boundaries
with the old gods
a swarm of crows
circle a solitary Inuksuk
casting long shadows
from the slow-moving glaciers
across the liturgy of dreams
a few chosen words
arrested in mid-chant
by the cry of a falcon
rising in the updraft
winnowing seasons
a shaman’s vision,
first must be understood,
nothing else matters.
no regrets
follow these footsteps
the unblazed portage
swallowed by arboreal forest
after the pillage of years,
the raging rapids labyrinth
roars into the pathless future.
FROG GIGGING
Ed Baranosky
Furu ike ya old pond
kawazu tobikomu frog leaps into
mizu no oto the sound of water
Matsuo Basho
Old Pond
The bull frogs were too quiet
and tonight the sun dropped into the marsh
the longest day of the season.
Jim skinned the amphibians,
ice-pick-pinned flashing and wet.
“There, that’s all there is to it,”
dropping his penknife into the creel,
still damp from the marsh;
“They don’t ever die easy, you know?
Must be the electricity, I guess.”
In the dim camp light
Jane noticed he’d cut himself,
blood pooling in his palm.
"Beer won’t do much, here
pour this moonshine onto it.”
“Yup, Two hundred proof
anniversary,” he quipped,
“just enough to blind love
and kill the pain of stigmata.
Just like chicken, they'll say.”
Chicken
The scent of scrub pine
mixed with skunk cabbage,
and campfire smoke
frying cat fish and frogs’ legs,
And the mosquitoes were loud.
“Years after the attic fire,”
he said, “you could still smell smoke
in the pillows when you slept.
I trapped enough mice then
to make a fur coat or a muffler."
“The finest brushes,” she said
are made from the armpits of mice,
or was that weasel or mink?”
“Kolinsky sable,” he said, smiling
“Now there’s a job description.”
“Shaver of rodent armpits?
No wonder they’re expensive.” she laughed,
still stirring the simmering food.
“How’s your hand? Up to a game?
Blackjack or poker?”
Blackjack or Poker
“Fix and fix and
now you’re all better ,”
She laughed, waving a glowing twig
over his closed, injured palm
"I always wanted to be a healer.”
“Yet all along, without noticing,
you were already a poet,” he said
frowning. “I knew a dealer once,
he was always looking over his shoulder,
watching for the spying pit boss.”
“ Deal then,” she said
as he fan-shuffled the deck.
"I’ll have to show you that trick,
sometime,” he said, dragging
his palm flat on the table.
In a flashing movement
Jane grabbed the ice pick, pinning
his palm to the table,
spotting the blood-pierced eye
of the Queen of Hearts.
LANDAU
Claramarie Burns
frail dream you open the door
from the inside
invasion of asterisks trample
in happy stampede across the sill
stained-glass carpet
(on fire) still magic raft
steady tramp looses sharp scent
crushed cardamom ventricles
beat to time of
steps strewn across—abandon
you enter here freely
from inside
in the depths of
my mirror
(DIS)CONNECTION
Claramarie Burns
pillars columns waves
sunlight water
slow rise of light
weight of gold about the windows
current closes
the fan turns
what happens when
your fingers forget me
& the fruit stays green & hard?
just once I want the fleeting taste
of your corners
unhurried across the branches
ON THE ROOF OF HELL
Aubrie Cox
beyond crayon walls
the warehouse window
barred and braced—
its cracks filled
with the end of the day
reading room packed
with books
and murmurings
as the guests of honor
unfold their own chairs
living the high life—
the fuzzy silhouettes
of factory buildings
as blue seeps
past the window frame
stories of her wayward uncle
in the frosted
fish scale window
the pink streak fades
in the middle pane
someday
we'll jet-pack through
the sodium light city sky
to where people
make love on the moon
through back doors
and alleyways
poets filter out
for another night
on the roof of hell
JAMAIS DE LA VIE
Ruth Holzer
men
who are built for comfort:
you can never know
enough
of them
the love
of my life
not—
but the one from whose mouth
I sipped wine, who drank from mine
not a drag
nor a swallow
do I regret
only that
there isn’t more
we fall asleep
to the sound of rain
on Roman streets—
I wonder when
our world will end
being
with you—
sometimes it’s almost
like being
alone
string quartet
in the villa gardens
a sultry breeze
you gazing around
in your rakish straw hat
guitar preludes
you used to play for me
every night
now and then
hardly at all
when I awaken
nothing here but a pen
under my spine
and an unfinished letter
on a sheet of blue paper
reconsidering
the story line
with a cold eye
it appears so clear
we didn’t have a chance
could I not
recognize
a narcissist
even after all this time—
jamais de la vie
GREY SEASON
Silva Ley
Till you died
the story of a garden
full filled with flowers.
I read and reread
watching, crying in late sun.
Some heliantes left,
dahlia's, phloxes, roses.
Do you trim the hedge?
The fade of colour: gold
across a border, not existent.
Your labour still glowing,
the snorflies admired,
the snails well-saved.
The soil still breathing you,
I wait as we waited for buds.
FOR YEARS NOW
for W. G. Sebald
Chen-ou Liu
my hometown
memories hang from the eaves
of a rooming house
they tremble faintly
each time a day passes
loneliness
has her black eyes
through them
I see my past rolling
on the screen of spring nights
in mind space
time moves in my direction
it curls back
when I visit my mother
in daydreams
everyone I meet
speaks with a funny accent...
in dreams
I return to my hometown
an ocean away
LOVE IN A FOREIGN LAND
Chen-ou Liu
April rain...
chasing memories
of my dream
love-in-a-mist...
is there a way back
for both of us?
one star
between bare branches . . .
thoughts of home
standing where
she left for the south...
carved names in snow
ON THE CUSP OF THE SOLSTICE
Doris Lynch
how quiet
the quiet before
winter dawn
first snowfall
the neighborhood runner
walks in tights
six crows
silent in a snowy field—
noon whistle
nickel-sized snowflakes
old man at the bus stop
wearing one glove
past midnight
can’t stay indoors
when the barred owl calls
not so close
small skunk
running in the road
winter sky-watching
sycamore branch divides
one star in two
ECHOES OF LOVE
Earl Moore
the spring garden
passionate love poem
softly echoes
my longing for you
but now emptiness
butterfly
the garden bench
Monarch
floating softly to my arm
echoing your soft touch
southern grass
soft morning fog
lightly moves
as your fresh body
at the movie last night
white dove
lands a few feet away
picnic basket
the echoed love of the past
and marriage vows to last
AGONY
P K Padhy
stormy night
deep darkness tears through
whiteness of woman
silencing every one else and
letting moon to set in shame
I scream
in the vacuum of loneliness
and talk to myself
reading the pages of remembrance
with a request wind to reply my voice
final breath –
he kisses the warmth of death
closing all senses
the greatest experience he inks
in different shadow of darkness
in my loneliness
with patches of shadow
I try to live
bridging distance of remoteness
with the ripples of remembrance
different silence
amidst roaring screams
life eclipses
into a distant absence where
God turns into stony silence
she hopes
sitting on the rocky corner –
the freshness of waves
to rinse the shore of love and affection
drowning the twilight of long separation
HIS CHANGING YEAR
Joanna M. Weston
end of summer
hoses coiled
and hung
sudden shower —
changing
the kitchen tap
smooth water
over small stones
daily chores
sunrise —
a tree breaks
the skyline
church door —
love-in-the-mist
gone to seed
the day before my birthday —
trying to catch
a snowflake
winter dusk —
his leaning
gravestone
calendula —
the anniversary
of his death
SINGLE POEMS
SECRETS
Don Ammons
only
my lover knows
the truths hidden from view
but our shared vows keeps her close and
silent
TWO SIJO
Gene Doty
at the foot of my bed, a monitor shows motivational messages the nurse
probes this vein, that vein, in hope of drawing my blood never dark in
this room, never quiet, still, my blood is grey
they've been at my heart with wires & knives & snaking tubes tuning,
replacing, setting the pace - they've been at my heart with wires I
lie supine under bright lights lost in a cloud of unknowing
AUTUMN
Don Ammons
colored
leaves fall turn brown
crinkle I rake pile high
put a match orange flame grey smoke
their end
cathedral steps
a monk scatters bread
for the tourists
Garry Eaton
crow calls
through a cold gray sky
regrets linger
Ryan Jessup
empty tables
the waiter opens the door
for the cat
Garry Eaton
soft dribble
quick tongue
this cat
studies water
like all others
Leslie Ihde
airport ashtray
torn snapshots
of a native girl
Garry Eaton
call me flash
my brother said
zooming past me at 5
on the phone he tells me
that his wife left him
Leslie Ihde
in my palm
the fortune teller
traces lines
one slides off my destiny
away from yours
Alegria Imperial
as a child
afraid in the dark
I finally decided
to be the monster
and scare you
Leslie Ihde
as the moon
transforms in sunlight
we shift roles
you into a clown, i
a hummingbird
Alegria Imperial
painting the glow
in the green of forest:
unseen fingers
RK Singh
not so different
from our ancestors
we collect stones
and pieces of wood
to make art
Leslie Ihde
my sister
adopted the doll
I neglected
will we argue when it's time
to take care of mom?
Leslie Ihde
recoiling from
the dog's seizure
I watch my father's
comforting touch
despite her foamy mouth
Leslie Ihde
red from sun
red from blushes
my skin reveals too much
Leslie Ihde
first frost
our breaths blow away
each other
Alegria Imperial
now that
Amanda Knox is free
I want to be let
into prison
freedom is so hard
Leslie Ihde
at the sound of sleet
chrysanthemums
hang their heads
Ryan Jessup
autumn chores –
moving caterpillars
from the bike path
ayaz daryl nielsen
winter roses –
the longing begins
at moonrise
Alegria Imperial
winter sky
on my window
a robin
Rachel Sutcliffe
winter evening
waking in the distance
moon through the trees
Ryan Jessup
icy night
the squeal of tyres
broken glass
Rachel Sutcliffe
new piano
the deaf boy puts his ear
to the keyboard
Magdalena Banaszkiewicz
first snow—
only the grandma
dozes off again
Magdalena Banaszkiewicz
time of waiting—
in the Christmas Eve compote
swelled fruits
Magdalena Banaszkiewicz
shared walk—
just your footprints
in the deep snow
Magdalena Banaszkiewicz
somehow ironic
these settlers who worked so hard
to clear the land
now rest in a graveyard
in remote wilderness
Jeanne Jorgensen
With blurred vision
I keep repeating prayers
that pawns my being
in the chess of life without
knowing when he intervenes
RK Singh
quiet spring night
she gently rubs his feet
with her feet
Ryan Jessup
tangle together
flames of a double lamp
on the terrace
RK Singh
For Sale sign—
the mail box is slanted
under the blooming plum
Clotilde Wright
Post tsunami
amidst the rubble—
a stone Buddha's smile
Clotilde Wright
Even the giggling
school girls pause—
Nagasaki bomb museum
Clotilde Wright
It must be a gift
from the Pure Land—
a thistle's purple bloom
Clotilde Wright
Drop after drop
of summer rain
so glad I forgot my umbrella.
Clotilde Wright
Haiga Alan Taylor
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