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