O/UR POETRY

Leaving Its Mark

By Duane L. Hermann Topeka, KS

Network of roads laid upon the prairie, imposed despite creeks and groves of trees, straight lines over rolling prairie rising up and down, rivers interrupt them, but not much else, no mountain heights to deter the lines. Crossing at right angles, the roads are a mark of one civilization obliterating another. What shall, some time, come after?

Tentatively

By Susan Jefts Diamond Point, NY

These thoughts we send in silence, as a fern sends exploratory runners. Cool nights when the woodstove sputters and hums, as winter ends and spring has not yet come. Nothing quite knows what to do—the garden lies brown and tangled, awaiting new earthshine. Sparrows dart back and forth in the dusky light of not yet daffodils, not yet brightly alive.

The Missing Poet

By Caperton Tissot Saranac Lake, NY

Marshaled ideas stood like soldiers in tight united ranks

I, of Puritan descent and rigid rules, burst the lines, sneaked away, to live on the other side, scrabbling through yellow years and perilous places while the artist, long suppressed, twisting inside, gasping for breath, began an upward push, with risky choices, acts of nonsense, kicking the air, walking the edges, begging to be fed sewing, painting, pottery and music until this: playing with poems to fill my belly but life’s riddles tear up my sleep, hurl me crashing against walls of reason.

And I remain, on the surface peering down.

A romantic steeped in pragmatic, hemmed in by logic.

Spiraling round and round, seeking the vortex heart yet flung to the edges, never descending to the core of the matter

Tethered to my past, tied down by comfort, unable to stretch, release irrational zeal.

Each rock turned over, each leaf examined, earth’s sweat inhaled while lying in fields of mystery grass and still, the essence escapes, syntax stiff, image elusive, the sacred hard to catch, while words, like flashing fish streaming through rainbows, float before my eyes in tantalizing array, magnificent but out of reach

Truth, like water, slips through my fingers, I send down buckets, they come up empty, words spill out below the surface.

Two Days in a Row

By Phil Brown Saranac Lake, NY

On a spring day I went up Little John on skis, Skinning amid yellow birch.

Not much of a view, but what’s this?

A leather key fob

With the initials PM.

Pat Munn?

I had only heard of him.

The next day I skied Marcy, A bluebird day,

And saw Ron Kon on the summit

With some of his friends.

You know how to get in touch with Pat Munn?

Hey, Pat!

Pat Munn clomped over in his tele boots.

Did you lose your car keys on Little John Mountain?

Yup, I did.

Well, I found them yesterday.

And that’s how I first met Pat Munn.

I Wanna Be Remembered Like The Stegosaurus

By Mia Vodanovich Sunnyvale, CA

i’m afraid we’ve made craters of each other’s hearts: if you take your brush and dust so at the little glimmers of ivory you may find what’s left of my bones in the rubble we never meant to do this to each other, just as the meteor never meant to land where it did, just as the dinosaurs never meant to die do you think we will be the same someday? do you think, a hundred or a thousand or a million years down the line, children will find us in their school books, and point, with their slightly damp little fingers (children have always had slightly damp little fingers, and i choose to believe maybe they always will), to the diagram of our burial sites? do you think they will memorize our names, claim one or the other as their favorites? if the next i see of you will be across the page, across the museum, across our gravesite, will you wave at least?

.

Postcard to an Almost Mountain

By Annie Furman Kelowna, BC

Dear Drumlin,

As glaciers retreat, they cast away unwanted weight: stones, soil, sweaters that are too small. Piled up, trailing off. They don’t write to say — I forgot it, that rock with the little white flecks, mail it to me? It meant something, I forgot it.

I have left footsteps on your stones and songs in your leaves. I have tried to leave nothing more than that, but I am afraid I have gone like a glacier. I have left a rock, small but heavy, tinged with red. Keep it a while?

I remain, fondly and forever, Yours.

Dark Moon

By Alshaad Kara

Beau Bassin, Mauritius

You can hear echoes from the soil... They are the souls coming from the source of nature.

Vibrantly crumbling down the roots on their way, They water each drought to a tornado of tsunamis...

Even the sky lifts the sun, Sending thunderous lightnings to illuminate the night, Pledging that the earthquakes shall accompany it.

Others creatures witness the ashes of repentance.

The moon, eyes of all, Promises that the earth will be no haven until, It becomes the next heaven...

Stone Fruit

By Marilyn McCabe Keene/Saratoga Springs, NY

I pace the aged orchard, fruit downed, flesh fallen away. And I begin to crave the stone. Place one in my mouth the size of a cherry. Grit settles among my molars, my tongue rolls the stone slick. I press its facets against the roof of my mouth. Taste of gray.

Of mold, mushroom, of iron, which is like blood. I come to know the tang of granite from the sour taste of schist, suck the garnet's berry. I try one plum-size, smooth, river-worn.

A jagged sparkling one. Do not bite down.

I cannot bite down. Swallowing becomes more difficult. One the size of a peach I press into my mouth's stretched o, my tongue trapped, spit gathers to drool. From my womb I push a stone baby, tiny feldspar fists, agate eyes. I watch her take a pebble, press it to her lips.

The Path Not Taken*

By Charles Watts Lake Placid, NY

Two paths diverged in a greenish wood,

Though I admit one had more yellow Sun bursting through the trees, and could

Lead up a hill where the mountain stood

And the other into the valley, moist and mellow

Darwin the beagle chose the valley

Perhaps because of squirrel smell

Or hares that in the meadow sally Though both on this mountain tally Equal, in truth, when the scents begin to swell

But one pair of footprints showed on each

And both had beckoned in prior days Both were rife with truths to teach All well within my meager reach Despite the morning’s graying haze

I shall be telling this with glee

When my teeth and hair are far less dense:

Two paths diverged in a greenish wood, and we---

We took the one the dog showed me “And that has made all the difference.”

Attic Office

By Alyssa Carroll Westport, NY

It seemed whimsical once. Thank God I had the good sense to put in a large window. My view from the top of the house looks out over Lake Champlain. Most days the lake is wind-tossed, but in today’s sunset the water is as still as glass. I’m three stories away from my husband. He laughs. The sound tries to muscle up through the floorboards only to fade.

Lone sailboat adriftmy inbox says two hundred emails yet

Bubble for Two

By Colter Mancini Jay, NY

Identity by clarity, with sincerity

A haze of reality, encompassing two Lost and found in the other’s charity

On this fantasy island, me and you

A bubble of brilliance, resilience, an ozone of perpetual presence

Two butterflies metamorphically magnetic

Two frequencies, one resonance

Halves by two, for a whole as if genetic

Lost in the sauce, not outta the loop, it’s inside, at That moment of the infinitesimal and eternal

An orbit of two, never flat Seconds, minutes, hours the time! Merely words in a journal

Why does it end?

This instant in time

IT is my best friend

Ever flowing, moving in motion, stillness, life, alive from a potion

The sweet comforts of this cocoon

We as one, authentic in fun, a true devotion Caricatures made of stardust, galactic cartoon

Warmth of the landscape; the real reality escaped Floating, flying Shielded around, cloaked from the clutter, a cloak, mithril, a blanket draped A fiction, truly lying!

A place of pleasure, pleasing, shared and devoid of pain

No one can enter, no one shall pass Gone with you, Durin’s Bane! The world outside inferior, through our looking glass

How CAN it end?

A haven, our heaven

YOU’re my best friend

Energies intertwining, lavishly interacting Containment; a new clear fusion

My thoughts to your thoughts, melding and reacting For Spock a confusion, for us the greatest illusion

This place, this time, this spacetime Where art thou?! Here and now, oh so sublime Please join me, us, you needn’t know how

This moment fresh, freshly poured and sparkling A Claymation, suspended animation

Frozen climax, peak height in this momentary fling Or can it be forever, an everlasting creation?

A Warmness on the Soul, sevenfold

Come with me, us, to our happy place

It’ll never get old Not a worry, fret or want; all gone without a trace

Everything ends

A start and finish, but when? A memory, when we were best friends…

I

Do Not Have A Favorite Chair

By Sarah Teresa Cook The Dalles, OR

Because I don’t let myself buy chairs and I don’t let myself choose favorites and I don’t let myself sit down and I haven’t learned what to do with these uneven feelings so I just hold them up like long funny trees