Poetry

Flamboyance

Apr 12, 2013 by D. S. Martin

The wild rose        summer’s flower
along the fading path grows sweet
though it only lives & dies to itself
& spring’s unseen trilliums        in forest shade
are lost        only to us        if the haste
of our lives won’t let us pass
Such flamboyance draws things
on delicate wings        & never goes to waste
though like grass       soon withering

The scientist        in lab coat or hip-waders
knows        to seek meaning in what he observes
The poet suspects        the right metaphors
await her        astir in stream glisten
                        afloat in pond stillness
                        asleep in forest glade
for nature makes nothing in vain
Colour & camouflage        ash & flame
seem ready to re-ignite        as we listen

Skunk cabbage

Apr 05, 2013 by Paul Willis

I’ve seen it in the hollows of the Cascades in Oregon,
    and head-high on the trail from Juneau up to the Icefield,
there to perplex
    the pink mouth of a black bear.

And here it is along Cedar Creek in Michigan—
    dark green, leafy as ever,
moisting out of the dark ravines
    like misplaced dollar bills.

But what can you buy this time of year
    with skunk cabbage?
Just this: violet, trillium, marigold,
    spring beauty.

Burying my mother

Mar 22, 2013 by Jeanne Murray Walker

This is what our wandering life has come to.
Our dead stay where they’re put, in different states.
We buried her beside the Texan, who
also loved her. Then we closed the gates.

None of us will join her. There’s the spot
they dug for hours to slide my brother in.
He lies beside my father in her plot—
or what was hers once—beneath Nebraska sun.

In Philadelphia, now, I will not rave
or overstate my grief. I won’t fly with flowers
to grace their level markers. I’m not brave.
Our family’s scattered. Will be. Nothing’s surer.

Who is she, elbow cocked against the sun,
waving to me this morning on the lawn?

Her cry,

Mar 15, 2013 by Jeanne Murray Walker

the morning when she finds the tomb empty
leaps from her the way the first spry geyser
sprang from the Titanic. She bangs her knee
and ducks to look again. Her adviser,
John, warned her it was dangerous to come.
Holed up behind locked doors, the gang of guys
who claimed to love him. She runs her thumb
across the ledge where his dead body lies.

Or rather doesn’t. Her heart’s a cypress
forming a final growth ring, final grief:
his body gone, his lithe hand, the small scar
from the sharp chisel. To what can she say yes?
Who is she now? Where to put belief?
Her cry gashes the fragile morning air.

Cricket song

Mar 13, 2013 by William Kelley Woolfitt

My head clangs, my skin congeals
when I imagine your final terrain:
the moldering gloom of the cave,
giant stone corking the mouth
to seal your body in—
you bid me to imitate you, even in this?
Until you rise, Love, I am useless.
Stretching in a long
rectangle of wall-shade,
I pretend my hand crumbles
dank sepulchral dirt. Listen.
In the corner, one cricket abides.
Soft-shelled and tooth-white,
he chirrs his dwarfed wings,
persistent song his answer
to the absence of light.