Hiking to the Holy Place

Every fern unfurling

Each tiny aster bursting

all the way up 

to the ridge

Says I give it all again

just like last year

says here, take, eat

Feast on this life.

We don’t care if you ride 

the Harleys roaring 

in that wolfpack way 

to the next bar

We don’t care if you drive

tricked out tractors 

hauling trailers 

of what we cannot

wait for one more day

We don’t care if you drink

too much bet 

too much

on the wrong horse

groan all night in your bed.

We don’t care from where

your many greeds arise.

We just keep on giving.

Sitting by the stone altar

I made, the right

crystals in all the right 

quarters wanting only

to protect this valley

I hail all my relations

and do not care

if I am finding

the right words

I am finding

these words.

© Bill Prindle, 2015

Fern unfurling
Photo by Tony Russell

Things That Break

I am the owner of plenty of broken things. 

My shoe sole has a tear,

My right eyetooth is chipped,

The window in our sunroom has that crack 

Diverging in two distinct lines.

The computer’s broke down, 

The printer won’t work,

And all those broken habits:

Working out, eating right, going to bed at 12,

Using words to say sorry and love you.

Mr. S., the father of my friend, 

The one who told the corny jokes

And took us bowling and to Olive Garden 

When we were eight and twelve and fifteen, 

He’s breaking down 

In the mind and motor skills.

My friend, she takes care of him. 

She can’t fix the broken, 

But she sits with him on long blue days 

And holds his hand that shakes, 

The one that filled her bike’s tire with air. 

She loves when the words come through wrong.

She looks and doesn’t see him quite the same, 

But keeps loving. 

In the mess of things that stop, won’t work right,

He is the broken thing that matters. 

© Emily Brown, 2015

Home in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Precedent

Helming the room 

Masked in black lace;

Ashen brick and specks of candlelight.

Quieting at her gavel.

At snapping fingers 

She stands slender, raven, and bare armed.

And I long

Like black seeds stuck in gums, 

Like wax dripped slowly on paper.

I rouse

Inky, slate rising,

So sanguine lipped and proud,

The staunch judge orders

And I serve.

© Malcolm Bare, 2015

Masked Woman
Photo from Pinterest
Masquerade by Belina Starscream

Holy Blues

Holy Blues

    “My roots are in the blues,

      the holy blues.”  - Alvin Ailey

Mama -- got the blues,

The holy blues;

The singin’, dancin’, drummin’

Holy blues.

My skin is dark and shinin’.

My heart is big and brave.

And tho’ my life is one long hell

I’ll take down to my grave,

I’ll dance and swing

The whole night through

‘Til birds begin to sing;

And when I die,

Just let me lie

While the saints blow holy blues.

              © Peg Latham, 2010

B. B. King, Live in Hamburg, November, 1971
Photo by Heinrich Klaffs
from Wikimedia Commons

Misperception

I smile as I look at you from a distance

still standing on the fence post – motionless.

I gave you such life –

named you Hawk and

endowed you with beauty and

even spoke to you of it.

I watched you not moving thorough

downpours and wind.

I brought you into my meditation and

allowed you to endow me with

groundedness, unwavering motionlessness

and persistence.

I took your archetype as a power animal

who would lend me powerful wings

and keen vision.

My friend still laughs about

my telling her not to disturb you

on her walk and make you fly -

so then perhaps our other friend 

coming later in the day

would still be able to see you –

after all, you had been there for hours! 

She got close enough to see

that you were just a wooden Owl

nailed to a fence post!

What else am I not looking at

closely enough to cause me

to harbor misperceptions?!?

© Diane Harner

Carved owl at Prestbury railroad station, Cheshire, UK
Photo by Danny Molyneux
from Wikimedia Commons

Dream About My Mother

I hold you in my arms 

while you are dying.

We are lying on your bed together.

The pillows are puffed like clouds 

and the blanket covers us like bath water.

Your labored breathing quiets itself

into a steady, shallow rhythm.

A harpist is  playing, her fingers

making music with the air between the strings.

You ask me where we are.

“We are in The Palace of Tranquil Longevity with

Qianlong, the Chinese Emperor.

He is bringing you your favorite foods

and your favorite books.  He has red flowers

with the scent of Byzance and he has plucked

one petal to dab behind your ear.”

In a whisper, you tell him about the good years

of your life and the friends who loved you, 

and Qianlong listens and says,

“I am happy you are ending with good recollections.”

Around the palace, the work is stopping.

Everyone is listening for your breath.

© Evie Safran, 2015

The Emperor's Garden
in the Palace of Tranquil Longevity complex
Photo by Francisco Anzola
from Wikimedia Commons

Apple

ripens wondrously

at the perfect rate

to realize its

myriad potentials

sweet or tart

red, green, or yellow

reaching maturity

embraced by sun and air

only to be plucked

from its lofty cradle

protective seal pealed away

cool juices drained

golden meat consumed

until only the core remains

the apple’s essence

born from a season

of growth

then decay

sweet quintessence

tart stimulation

crafted over time

the apple 

generously gifts seeds

for a budding tomorrow

© William Vollrath

Apples
Illustration from Luther Burbank's
Half-hour Experiments with Plants (1922)
Library of Congress
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

New Sneakers

AWAY ------

I LOVE LITTLE KIDS IN AIRPORTS,

JUST LOOK!

BLONDE PONYTAIL FLYING,

WITH SHORT LEGS, PUDGY AND STUMBLING,

SHE CAREENS SQUEALING ACROSS THE VASTNESS

OF THE NEARLY EMPTY CONCOURSE.

ARE THOSE SMALL WHITE SNEAKERS

REALLY BUTTERFLY WINGS?

HER PARENTS ARE NOT FAR BEHIND,

LIKE ME, WITH A SENSE OF BOUNDARIES

AND BAGGAGE.

PERHAPS WE SHOULD GET NEW SNEAKERS.

© Gerry Sackett, 2015

Dulles Airport Concourse
Photo by Morio
from Wikimedia Commons

TUNIS—BARDO MUSEUM—2015

To become powerful in this world

You must learn to destroy joy,

Destroy the Muse, destroy souls.

You must spray videos of your pride

In the decorum of torture, the ritual of righteous murder.

Your failure to be human

Becomes Absolute Law—unappealable.

You establish the tyranny of arid illusion,

Lovelessness, the faultless Priesthood of Death.

Each person is a Museum

Where memory is a masterpiece,

Where our secret Muse is guarded,

Past and present one vivific delight.

Yet our yearning is art.

Each Museum is therefore a person

Where Joy is studied by lovestruck scholars,

Where art is heart, breathtakingly displayed.

High sadness is here, part of our soul.

So the museum is an immortal Garden

That soars on our bliss into the future.

Here, the shapes of our hope are valid.

We see, and our mind caresses our sorrow and goodness.

Museums are therefore a garden

That must be sprayed with death

By righteously insane gardeners.

Hectic soul-flowers must be poisoned,

The muses disintegrated in ecstasies of hate.

For the failure to be human

To become absolute law, Awe must be identical to murder.

Innocence is declared guilty.

Art, identity, soul can’t exist—museums can’t exist.

The flying garden must be forgotten.

The people in the Museum are guilty

Because they are people.

But the Universe is a museum, a garden

They can’t destroy,

Where the startling stars are displayed

Like flowers, like souls,

Like the art of blessed yearning.

This Garden is guarded, this House of the Muse,

Somewhere almost forever.

The Shape of our names

Somehow, there will be safely luminous.

Yearning will also be solace, home.

© Stephen Margulies, 2015

Garden in Nogueira da Silva Museum, in Braga, Portugal
Photo by Jose Olgon
from Wikimedia Commons

The Fraudlings

Today I am feuding with the Fraudlings: Tiny rowdy beings that, whenever I feel bold, snarl at me "Who do you think you're fooling?"

They get loud when I start getting industrious, autonomous, visionary, sure-spoken. They call out names like "faker," "poser-girl," "dull, broken, unworthy hoaxster."  I hear them all around: from bookshelves and dusty corners, kitchen cupboards and along the garden path. I work tight and breathless to block out their heckling, but they are always waiting for me to let go. They can wear me down until I relent and escape.

They stay so pleasantly quiet when I sit passively, watching and mindless. Those are fitting activities for me, they think. They celebrate when my brain is idling and my body is still. They get high on the guilt-fumes that rise from the wasting of life.

They used to live in my cerebral cortex, right in there. They had a trailer park set up, had it easy for years. They could watch my sparkly intentions flash round my synapses like lightning bugs on a summer night and they'd bat the spark right out of them without even setting down their beers. On occasion, a big idea would flush and surprise them - threaten to poop on their party- but those vicious little rednecks could always shoot it down before it got much air.

I finally sniffed them out and started poking at their encampment, prodding into their little trailers and squinting to read their tiny tattoos and saying, "I don't think y'all belong in here anymore. I want to use this patch for something else... Something newer, or older, I haven't decided yet.  Definitely something fresher."

The Fraudlings did their normal demotivational hollering. I stared them down, and started plotting against them.

I pestered them with new rules. I posted signs that I knocked into the gray matter with my fist:

"intoxicants and firearms prohibited"

"quiet hours strictly enforced"

"no dumping"

"no haters"

I noticed how much easier it was to sink something in there than in the packed clay of my garden. The place is fertile ground, litter-strewn and unplanted ever since the Fraudlings squatted there.

Then I interrogated them:

"How did you get in here?"

"Why are you so loud?"

"Why are you so down on me?"

I never got a straight answer...

The scrutiny was too intense for them, though. They packed up, marched down my ear canals, spitting, moaning and threatening as they left, then out and bouncing off my shoulders in all directions. The weedy bastards seemed smaller on the outside. I got to work, cleaned up the mess they'd left.

They are still living in my house and occasionally climb in my pockets. They leap from me like fleas that whisper and sneer from other people's shoulders. They cling there and say "one slip and she'll see who you really are," or "you'll never be as free and together as this guy." This used to make me cower, but I'm getting better at ignoring them.

Days like today, when I am searching for an outlet for my voice, they have a sporting holiday - they hurl grappling hooks at my ears and try to swing in as they yodel "Who, You?" I foil their invasions, shake them off, one day at a time.

As long as I fight, I have space to cultivate my will, to plant seeds of intentions, to stake up my seedlings so they can take off, gain their own energy and make a tall stand of my work so full that the fresh hushing of wind in the branches will diffuse the sharp edges of distant war-cries, making them directionless and dull, as they should be.

© Laura Seale, 2015

Dr. Squintum's Exaltation or the Reformation, 1763
from Wikimedia Commons

I Will Get There

No one will stop my growth.

No one will hold me down.

Nothing will prevent my going on.

I will walk onward with head high.

I may turn in circles for a while

because there seem to be walls,

but I will find an opening.

I may seem to be going back

because a force is pulling me,

but I will stand still and wait,

to walk on alone and with pride.

No one and nothing will stop me.

So watch out for me,

I’m coming to full growth!

Put all the stumbling blocks 

you want to stop me.

I will look around and climb over,

with a few scratches on the journey,

but when I get there,

I will be glowing with completeness.

Nothing can stop me,

so get ready for me:

I will be there.

© Hilda Ward, 2015

Civil Rights march on Washington, D.C.; 1963
Photo by Warren K. Leffler
U.S. News &P World Report Photograph Collection
Library of Congress
from Wikimedia Commons

Dog

When lonely, his whimper

sparks across the dark

gap where the heartbeat's born

like a wolf howling

a bridge of sorrow

to the moon.

Once I left him too long.

He dug a hole so deep

it became a throat

that swallowed night.

I climbed down to get him out,

saw stars shining overhead

at noon.

If I forget to feed him,

he nibbles 

crumbs from my childhood,

that place swept

and left  long ago.

When I dream

he runs, leash-free,

returns to lick my hand.

One night

I will follow him

to the river,

step into a weathered boat

floating on the cold fire

of captured stars,

then walk with him

into his world.

© Jean Sampson, 2015

Canis Major among the Myth Constellations
from the Universe Today website

Your Short Leaving (for Nelson Mandela)

You are in our hearts and our souls;
our thoughts fill with only your being.
We dance not for dying on this one day,
But we sing in joy of your short leaving.

For we are here to keep your name alive
in words that tell of you as saint to none,
who was of this world when in sorer want
and saw new from the old under the sun.

We sing and dance in joy for your going;
our thoughts fill with only your being.
You are in our hearts and our souls;
We will long keep you in your short leaving.

© Dennis Wright, 2015

Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, May 2008
South Africa, The Good News
from Wikimedia Commons

Boy Who Waits

His smile opens over a missing 

front tooth. Perhaps he’s eight, 

maybe nine. A gray wool cap 

hangs on his forehead, jacket 

buttoned, black.  He perches on 

the end of a planked bench and 

waits as instructed.  He holds 

his hand on a plaid red blanket 

draped across the bench -- is it 

his mother’s fringed shawl -- maybe, 

it is worn, it is dear.  He looks straight 

at Chagall as if posing one century 

ago in Paris, or was it Vitebsk?  

Morning sunrays warm the walls, the 

floor of a room that seems cozy, 

except the doors that are padlocked 

and the barren space -- lock, bench, 

cupboard, a dustpan, rose-colored jug 

stored high, out of his reach.  

Scarce color in this painting, the boy’s 

feet are on the floor.  No magic cows or 

smiling horse, no lovers float above. 

This was what the artist painted, nothing 

more about the boy.  Imagine him painted 

now -- would the lock be gone, the title new?

or would nothing change -- the boy sitting

idle, waiting as told, faint hues of 

red and rose -- still the village idiot.

© Marti Snell, 2015

Painting: “The Village Idiot” by Marc Chagall (1914-15)

 http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/483517   

Painted in Paris but likely an image from his home near Vitebsk, Belarus - part of the Russian Empire. Oil and graphite on paper (49.5 x 37.8 cm). In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Sunset

Is so much more than gold-lit treetops above the pines.

Like an arresting figure drawing near, I’m hesitant to describe, 

sundown absorbs all the likely adjectives in its saturated demise.

There is light, though not the “bright white” of those curly electric bulbs,  

a dull, diffuse, dusty light found where surplus objects are sold.

There’s that pink in the sky remarked by parents’ sighs on the 

evening of another day.

There’s the still blue sky, house hues darkening on the rise,

the kind of light felt in dreams without color or warmth,

a wholly other substance, the view beyond the frame.

There’s the light left in the living room, the reflected light on the chair,

on the slats and the edge of the leather seat while other objects disappear. 

There are layers of darkening trees, a searing ribbon of gold sky,

a purpling of indigo and pink and stunning aqua to the east.

I move through darkening rooms to catch the light’s distant fire, 

as a witness to a burning savannah, in a country never traveled. 

Still there is the light, a fire’s embers burning,

a smoky grey surrounds what’s left, the baby blue has died, 

the aqua’s gone, all features dimmed, a trace remains of proof of day 

when streetlamp lights my window.

© Mary E. Burns, 2015

Riebeis, Austria ~ evening
Photo by Stefan Mayrhofer
from Wikimedia Commons

Stafford’s Last Year: Cento

Old mistakes come calling: no life

happens just once. Whatever snags

even the edge of your days will abide.

You are a turtle with all the years on your back.

Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows

till they learn that floating, that immensity;

maybe somebody has to explore what happens

when one of us wanders over near the edge.

Whatever fits will be welcome, whatever

steps back in the fog will disappear,

as you will, wherever you go after this day,

just a stop by the road, and a glimpse of someone’s life.

Is there a way to be gone and still

belong? Travel that takes you home?

It’s heavy to drag, this big sack of what

you should have done.

And now if there is any light at all 

it knows how to rest on the faces of friends.

Touches of wind. The room you have

in the world is ready to change.

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found.

Well, it was yesterday. And the sun came,

Why

It came.

© Bill Prindle, 2015

Sources: lines selected from poems written by William Stafford in 1993, the last year of his life. The last three lines end the poem he wrote the day he died. All selections from The Way it Is.

Turtle popping its head above water
Photo by William Warby
from Wikimedia Commons

Afton Mountain Piper

A warm summer day and the downhill run 

from Staunton home, and there he stood

in Highland array at the overlook, 

bag full and chanter to his lips.

A private moment, it seemed,

else we would have stopped

to listen, perhaps to chat

if he had a mind to.

But he was intent on his piping, 

facing east across the valley—

piping, one might think,

to immigrant family

who settled these hills,

tracing in his mind an unseen path

from a lowland port westward

among the glens and across these icy streams.

A mountain people before they came,

born in rocky crags stretching beneath the sea

to these selfsame Appalachian hills—

now home in ways they knew and didn’t know.

And what of this does the piper ken?

Does he pipe back two hundred years

to an ancestor Barclay or Black,

McLean or McIntosh, who built here and farmed

the land below?

Or does something stir deeper in his blood

tying him to another place and time,

and so he stands today on a new Afton

far, far this side of home, 

oblivious to the interstate

and growl of traffic and curious stares,

as alone as a man can be heart-deep among his kin,

piping to a distant land?

              © David Black, 2015

Bagpiper at Loch Garry
Photo by Bleiglass
from Wikimedia Commons

The Road

In the dark

I drive over timeless mountains.

The sky exposes herself to me

In falling starlight and dreamy wisps

Of moonlight.

The road unfolds before me,

Telling a story I discover in each moment.

I know the path well.

I have driven here before,

Finding your love again and again throughout time.

In pauses between conversations with strangers I call friends;

In the quiet of night when only the insects speak to me,

My mind wanders back to you.

In these day dreams,

The timeless mountains become the curl of your hair

Over my naked arm while you sleep.

The night sky and the dreamy wisps of moonlight

Become the remembered depth of your eyes

With the pale reflection of me in their earthy circumference.

In these moments

The stars tell stories of constellations

We have not yet imagined.

The story of us is born again ceaselessly from the same source,

And the road is the pathway between our hearts.

© Fergus Clare, 2014

Narrow road leading to Paranal Observatory
Atacama Desert, Chile
Photo by Julien Girard, an astronomer for ESA

Look in My Window

               So, look in my window.  Stare at me.  Mock me.

What do you think you see?

A white haired woman standing by the counter, cooking?

I hear you thinking, "Why does she stand there,

day after day, just cooking, cooking?

She's alone, who the hell will eat all that food?"

Might you, peeking in my window, see more than this chopping old fool?

Might you think, "There's a person who wants to be useful."

It is painful when you are more than the world wants.

Energy imploding, cells discouraged from replicating,

wrinkles manifest like uncooked ramen noodles.

It is a fact of this world that we must fight to be visible, useful, appreciated,

as the years pile up like chicken bones tossed in the grass after a picnic.

Fight.  What a word...

In aging, who wants to fight?

You, in the window, why don't you turn away?  What's the fascination?

Could you possibly be thinking that I have something to give you?

I could make you laugh; I could make you cry; I could make you think;

I could feed you.

You think I am used up, but you don't understand:  I want to be used up -

when I can't light the oven anymore.

Big pots of soup, whole baked chickens, yeasty loaves of bread,

gallon jars of kim chee, cookie sheets of roasted apples and peaches.

© Evie Safran, 2015

"Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace"
Vincent van Gogh, 1885
Metropolitan Museum of Art
from Wikimedia Commons

Old Appliances

Once upon a time,

When I was very young,

I looked upon my avocado colored appliances

   with joyful pride.

My shiny refrigerator, so "avante garde,"

Brightening my kitchen with a light

That reflected on to the same color oven door

Where I baked the children's cookies.

But moving took me away from the kitchen set,

Gave me instead an old Sub Zero that smiled 

With its gleeful huge wood-paneled door.

And though quite old,

It happily substituted for the shiny avocado one,

Doing its job while plodding away for 20 years and more

As I refused to part with

One who had morphed into

An old friend,  

Reliably ready when the children

Reached inside for their after school snack

Of milk and cookies.

Gone are those days of dependably seeing the children.

Fragmented memories remain,

Like those of the old Sub Zero,

Replaced now with jet black GE's,

A matching set taking on the role,

No children's fingerprints to mar their glaze.

They stand alone… waiting. 

© Shelly Sitzer, 2015

"Landscape with Refrigerators"
Painting by Kida Kinjiro
from Wikimedia Commons