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STRANDED IN KANSAS
Billie Marsh
I am stranded in Kansas
dreaming of Cornwall and Kent.
I am baking in Kansas,
slaving to pay the rent.
I am broiling in Kansas
ever so far from the sea.
I've run aground in Kansas
where I have no wish to be.
Why did I choose to wander
so far away from home?
I can't live in this flat land,
away from sea, surf, and foam.
I miss the rain and the fog,
soft mist and moors that I know.
I can't stay here in Kansas,
pass time watching corn grow.
Once I get home to England,
I'll nail my boots to the floor,
content in Cornwall or Kent.,
home with the sea at my door.
OUT OF THE GLARE
Leona Heitsch
East of the frosty ridge,
out of the burning rays
of a sun just risen,
wild voices filled the sky.
Urgent calls . . . nothing to be seen,
then three swans broke out of the glare,
chorusing above bare oaks.
They veered northward
as they crossed the trail,
executed as neat a hyperbola
as would boomerangs slung
by synchronous hunters
working the deep ravine.
The stuff of legend in a winter dawn:
The straight, long neck
of the flying swan.
RESURRECTION
Betty Gipson
Yes, I have known the joy
igniting April's feathered choir.
And I have sampled love
that melts the frozen earth from dream.
But dormant days
have lately laid
across my lips a seal.
The will to speak,
to shout, to sing
lies broken.
Oh, gloried Spring, that sparks
from brokenness to life
the womb
the bloom
The Tomb,
Break my bonds, too,
And green my winter through!
WRITE FOR TWO HOURS EVERY DAY
Mary L. Zachmeyer
Member-at-Large
My writing mentor says,
“Write the first thing every day—for two hours!”
But early in the morning when I crawl out of
bed,
I can scarcely bend my back to sit on the john—
let alone get the brain to work and feet shuffling
to my desk,
put the dog out and whisper a few prayers that no stranger comes
knocking
before I’ve found my FACE and applied it.
It’s true that the subconscious is alive and kicking in this
half-sleep state,
but the rest of the body, mind and soul, are on vacation in
Snoreland.
My mentor doesn’t know how Grandmother
peeks around corners at me
shakes her finger and tells me to pick up the
kitchen
make my bed, wash my face and get dressed
even before God gets up in the morning.
German blood runs thick in these veins,
blood that swept walks daily
weeded every blade of grass out of order.
Well, I killed thirty minutes at this ungodly hour of the morning.
Now what do I do for ninety minutes more?
MOON LAMP
Thomas Imhoff The lamp high,
far and wide,
a light in the dark.
In an opening,
on grass and leaves,
the lamp beams.
Light on surfaces,
shadows underfoot,
stillness above and below.
The earth seems asleep,
asleep beneath the straw,
earth's dreams passing by.
The lamp seems half asleep
and a light for dreams.
It lights no spark or flame.
AUNTIE MORRIS, 1935
Bee Neeley Kuckelman
She lived next door with Daddy Morris
No children to mess up their little house
just a caramel-colored cat
Auntie sang on sunny days
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam
to shine for him each day
On rainy days we heard her purr
Here Bubbles, come on in now
Bubbles baby
Auntie Morris taught me two strange things
First not to twist my tongue if I should
say
I slit a sheet A sheet I slit
Second women's bodies should be hidden
She always said I didn't have to knock
to walk right on in her house
but one day when I did
I saw her naked in the bathroom
Her green eyes sizzled when she saw me
She arched her back
hissed Mercy sakes
and tried to hide her bumpy body
I turned around and ran
and never even saw
what Auntie Morris thought I shouldn't see.
BROKEN
Cindy Tebo
A cinquain
clay
pipe
with leaf imprints
like a child taken from
its mother, the stem no longer
remains.
GRAMMA'S HANDS
Dawn Harmon
I cannot
help but run
my fingers over hers--
with paper-thin skin
the color of ripe peaches stretched
over dainty hands.
Her hardworking, nimble fingers
fly through their work--
shelling peas, shucking corn, but rest
now on her aproned lap.
I sit beside her, my head resting upon her chest,
listening to the steady beat of her heart--
thump-thump,
thump-thump--
security found in
her acceptance of me.
I trace her veins beneath
the shiny surface of her skin,
and ask how her hands became so soft.
“Your guess is as good as mine,”
she answers, as she pats my hands with
her thin, cold fingertips.
DATELINE: NEAR AND FAR
Derlyne Gibson
Enraged, the eagle stooped to strike
a mad crow flying wild,
attacking errant eaglets.
Eaglets have a right to fly
as they please, although
the crow thought otherwise.
Then
crowlets fell, as eaglets had,
madness and revenge
following the same flight path.
A uniform redness across the sky
reveals that difference in size
cannot disguise a common featherhood.
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ABOVE TUCSON
Betty Louise
McLane-Iles
I can’t
bear to leave the
mountains
brown, hard, firm affirmations
of the earth
and life’s
quiet projectiles of unpossessed power
and redemptive lost wilderness
beyond our grasping and our losses,
affirmations that beauty, freedom and
wild hopes remain just
outside of laughter and the
sanctified expansion of cities and
dreams.
I used to ride those trails
of the Catalinas, sometimes on horseback or in
a Chevy, and later in my
memory, embellished, insulated
as reminiscences frequently
dim one reality
and
shelter it with a multitude
of loosened dispersed
moments until the certainty and joy
of having lived is distanced
and compelled to lie hidden
for years,
until life changes and displaces
suns and dawns and
reminds you of the power
and embrace
of the mountains in the desert|
under the light.
TRUE FRIENDS
Ted
O. Badger
The great
thing about friends
is if you act stupid
or dumb, they still continue to
like you.
SPARROWS
Marie McCubbin
Sparrows rest on power lines
like weathered clothespins
dreading the next laundry.
The tinkle of seed on tin
sparks them into a crash landing
to vie for bird boundaries.
Seeds scatter to the ground.
In feathered conflict,
beaks, claws, and wings tangle.
When morsels disappear,
the birds return to power lines
to recharge their batteries.
TRANSCENDENCE
Eldonna DeWeese
I would be pure song
lilting and echoing
off misty hills.
I would be pure love
caressing
the rough
and
broken places.
I would be pure form,
swirling in the gases
of the north star,
lithely dancing past
the crescent moon
and the shadowy trees,
Coming to light
in the luminous blue
of roadside
flowers.
My car lights flash down the lane,
whose arching trees frame
a bright star.
You are asleep, not to be awakened.
Will you ever find me in the universe?
THE SWALLOWTAIL
Helen McIntosh Gordon
A swallowtail appears
and suddenly
there is music across the lawn,
notes floating on the breeze,
dropping in the pond:
a wayward song
lasting about as long
as the shake of a wand.
POET
Marie Asner
When all is quiet in her house,
there comes a time for her
to take pen in hand and
whisk away worry-webs of the day
place them on dustpan of paper
and sweep a page with words.
Withdraw deeper and deeper
until room and light dim
and she is floating downward--
past ground level of rejection
past permafrost of impatience
past time-consuming and irritating
until close to bedrock a cave appears
with single lit candle,
reserved for those who seek single words.
Silently until dawn
she
writes
poetry
HOLIDAYS
Laurence W. Thomas
It's not until
Friday
or sometimes even Saturday
that I respond to an urge
and go upstairs to sit
maybe with a book
and finally know
that Thanksgiving is over.
I'm grateful for that
although it usually
signifies nothing more
than the title Faulkner
swiped from Shakespeare.
So it is with holidays:
the government takes one
every month--takes, not gives--
and the commercials conspire
to send me upstairs
maybe with a book.
FLEET OF GOLD
Mary Kim Schreck
Nine little canoes
all tucked together
in their protective sphere.
Each tiny canoe
filled with a payload of gold
a riotous juice--safe--
floating with flavor
in such a logical container.
The lively juice
the reasonable container
the orange.
SUITE FOR SNOW PLOW
Diane Glancy
The earth was a
dream
just floating above some dust.
the dream would have remained dream
but it longed to become a storm.
The dust did not want to mix with the dream
but the longing of the dream continued.
The dream became the storm it wanted to
become
in the emptiness of being.
The dust held rigid
until it began to itch
like one of those wool coats in the mission
school.
It blew into the center of the dream
that became the storm from which the earth stepped.
OBELISK
Mary Zachmeyer
Midnight
tracks through the night
while my insides
burn for sleep
but I need you,
faithful poem.
You dance
by the stream
near the banks of the Danube,
waltz your whispers in my ears.
You snuggle
on branches and burst
into dogwood blossoms.
On the faces of children
your laugh
tickles their tummies,
and in the womb
the child
grows within your symmetry.
THE KINGDOM UNDERGROUND
C. J. Clark
Into earth's bowels
I traversed one day
Departing familiarity
For dazzling chimera
Of enigmatic alchemy
In this kingdom underground.
Where straws hang from ceilings
While fathomless infinity lies
Just past talus' gates
Amidst speleothems
And flowstone coruscate
In dripstone grandeur.
I crawl through claustrophic crevices
To wander serpentine
Rimstone dam mazes
Home to salamanders
Beyond bacon wave walls and
cystalline popcorn dazes
In alchemy's laboratory
This kingdom underground
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