To A Small Moth

( —–Pronuba) by Susan Kelly-DeWitt             InterBoard Poetry Competition

You hover, a tiny flame                             Egrets Along the Yolo Causeway
    above white candles
        of yucca —– the night air                     

sings you, breathes
    you. While death
        crouches in his slack

cocoon, you fling your
    invisible rope-bridge
        of moth dust, white

panicle to white panicle.
    I too wing my way—–
        crepuscular —–

while the singular brightness
    of the Swan
        arches over me; as if

like a spark
    I could be drawn upward
        toward Deneb.

I wish I could fathom
    our tracery! unravel our skein
        back to start, beyond

mystery.
    We are both salted
        by moonlight

but you, pollinating mother,
    climb boldly up the stairs
        of each petal, leaving

gilded
    footprints.

 
 

 

The Separate Sleep                       by Brad Buchanan

The trees stand tall at
night, practicing the gestures
that impress the moon.

You tell me that the
night before our wedding, I
made noises like a

forest storm. The lush
rustling in my throat when I
spoke my vows, the rain

that swept my clouded
eyes had been subconsciously
rehearsed. So you say.

What watchfulness in
that silent woodland did you
mimic, staying close

to those whipped branches?
Did you perceive the prey of
love, burrowing deep

or clinging wildly
to shaken boughs? Was death
that separate sleep?

Every Child is Poetry         by Nora Laila Staklis

(Silvia speaks to  Noah:)

 

Your sisters pictured brother while

my melon-belly embraced

you like God’s cloud home.

 

Wake, fat baby boy!

Your angel-breath pierced eternity.

Porcelain son

born blush red.

Your naked bellow

circles our universe.

Peace Pilgrim Wall Calendar 2002    by Andrew Sullivan

                        First things first, January, 1953

in Pasadena she walks east owning only

a comb, a folding toothbrush, a ball-point

pen, a map, some copies of her

message and her mail.  Thirty-one

 

                                                strides out

of deciduous shadows of personal history, make

me an instrument through which only truth

can speak, the swish swish of her

practical blue slacks for twenty-eight

 

                                                years through

fifty States, northward with the waxing of

crickets and dandelions.  I walk until given

shelter, fast until given food: wild blueberries,

tortillas and beans, miner’s lettuce, apples, grapes,

thirty-one

 

            harvests of dew resurrect her pilgrim

tongue: this is the way of peace—

overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth,

hatred with love.  Nowadays, not even one

person in thirty

 

                        would know whether to

snicker or initiate God knows what, God

knows where.  There are always oddballs who

walk with her until blisters and cramps

lame their resolve less than thirty-one

 

                                                            minutes

or miles into the purifications and relinquishments.

This month she is invited to speak—

a photo of her reveals the instant

when she recognizes that the more than

thirty

 

            thousand miles she has wandered have

brought her to Knox, Indiana, to a

man who hopes to understand why she

wears a tunic that reads “Peace Pilgrim.”

After more than thirty-one

                                               

                                    thousand questions about

that and Hiroshima and Korea and Vietnam,

she grins into our furtive periscopes from

everywhere on the 360º of unsecured horizon,

route of her august pilgrimage through thirty-one

 

degraded ecosystems and counting.  Who here yearns

to be skeptical?  Everything out of harmony

is on its way out.  Who here

longs for entropy and half-lives?  Peace enters

Nevada thirty

 

                        seconds after a mushroom cloud

irradiates breastmilk and truckers and Hell’s Angels

who surprise themselves (but not that queer

woman) with a bold metaphysics of inner

peace.  She continues walking thirty-one

 

                                                miles for

every thirty-one yards of ours.  When you

have completely surrendered to God’s will, the

way seems easy and joyous.  Quaint, but

good God, this thanksgiving surrender takes thirty

 

times more courage than do the alternatives.

In her monthly portraits, Peace moves toward

infinitesimal moves toward her.  Imagine a gaze

lit before and after the knowledge of

good and evil.

Lord’s Candle                            by Susan Kelly-DeWitt
       (Hesperoyucca Whipplei)

In the old days, I too
would have wanted it
to be more than itself—–

I would have seen
what the missionary
who named it

must have seen:
white flowering
torch: “Lord’s Candle.”

But now I worship
at the alter of
the small—–

most amazed
and satisfied
by the ordinary

motions of a leaf
outside my window,
the veining

of a wing
as it catches fire
in the light,

how the darkness
celebrates
with the midnight

confetti of moth dust.

Orchard Man                       Lara Gularte        Days Between Dancing

Somewhere in the orchard
a baby bird calls for its mother.
You offer me the nest,
two blue eggs, still warm
in a bed of twigs,
your hands, hot spoons,
on my body.
Light pulls away from the trees,
wind sprays dirt in my face.
I close my eyes tight.

You let me ride in the back
of your pickup,
bring me tadpoles,
sometimes a frog.
I get dimes
if I let you take my hand
and I take the warm, soft thing
below your belt.
I turn my head away,
keep my eyes shut.

When I start Kindgarten,
they test my vision.
I can't stop blinking.

Belota Farms, The Old Hotel                        by David Holman

I come up always the same way;
over the golden hills, past the pond --
its saucer-shape, the tinged water
spilling Earl Grey over the brassy fields --
air pungent with the scent of blackberries
plumb on the brambles along the road.

Once I played here, hide-and-seek,
ghost-in-the-graveyard under harvest moons
stumbling among luminous pods of chestnut.
I pulled dark cherries from a laden branch,
returned each spring to the miracle of blossoms,
and stayed always until late night still

wondering about the nameless creature who
lived in the high boughs of black walnuts.  They
are tearing down the Fisher Hotel, board
by board, jib and joist, gable roof
light gone from the blonde wood, weary
grain razed.  My shoes turn on the gravel;

the dark body obediently follows.
This is the leaping beast:
what we watch clawed down, flung,
what is stolen and cried out for,
what remains to shore up each
while we stride the endless orchard.

shelter                              by Julia Connor      x-ing the acheron



under the arbor
the ardor
of september
clusters

my thumbs polish
the cloud-glass
of childhood
grapes

little mirrors
little terrors
I devour
one by one

Fly Fishing on the Rio Calaveras       by Muriel Zeller    Red Harvest

Hip-deep in the cold rushing
River of Skulls, he cast
his fly line again, caught
an 18 inch arc of sunrays
in beads of jasper water
breeched from below
by a rainbow trout.
He was alone with river
banks thick-veined with wild
blackberry vines, a sand bar,
beached bones...his pulse
and the atmosphere
in time. River-flow so constant
he had stopped listening
now had his attention
as he reeled in a hand-tied
caddis fly & the fish on the hook
fought to remain beneath
the dry and breathless world.

 

      The Cat and I, Glenn Gould and Bach       by Mary Zeppa


Our 16 pound cat, a great lover of Bach, settles in, swings both ears
toward the sound.  Takes it in through his fur, through his
whiskers, through the wide-open door to his mind.
And, like Mesmer, Svengali, Houdini,
holds my wide-open eyes,  pulls
me in.
           Now we breathe through the music.  Turn
easily,
      float.  It is natural
swimming through sound.  We are lifted, first
passacaglia, then fugue
                         as the cat
               slips a paw in my hand.
                                 As we crest the last wave, as we ride in
on Gould (on Gould, necromancer of yearning, of pain, on Gould
wrapped in mufflers, a tweed overcoat and a thick,
fleecy cap on the 15th of August),
                                             our mere bodies melt
the piano's black keys.  We are white-hot, are star
bright, our dazzling
                   bones
         are the lighthouse Bach builds from the dark.

The Idea of Art                       by Nancy Wahl           Pony Fish


Glass spirals, ornaments
hanging in a window,
tossing lights:
Aristotelian stars
before Galileo or Copernicus.
Such a simple grace,
hung there by students
for the idea of art--
or for playfulness.

We are reading
Elizabeth Bishop’s poem,
   Poem,
in which a seventy-year-old painting
of a landscape--strangely
familiar to the poet,
and stirring memories,
(not unlike my own)--
has been passed down
through several generations,
past and present observed alternately
   and together.
Little bits of detail, a gabled house
in “awful shades of brown”
and an unexpected yellow iris,
   conflict,
reach through time.

A student reads out loud the line,
“Our visions coincided...” and asks
   about fate.
The spirals in the window
keep turning, reflect
bits of amber sun dust; twist,
catching shadows
intermittently becoming,
   only briefly,
the dark side
of the light chasers.

It occurs to me to tell the student
fate is numinous and creative
   and, like light,
infinitely playful.

Visiting Berkeley with My Daughter                 by Gilbert Schedler     Honest Talk

We ate salad doused in garlic
and chicken raviolis on a sunny patio,
watched the middle-aged singles
bat their eyes over coffee mugs.

On Telegraph Avenue we bought a silver ring
and listened to an evangelist
try to scare us toward Jesus
while young people with pieces of pizza

and purple spiked hair strolled by.
Finally we stopped at an outdoor café,
drank hot apple cider and
café latte.  'Bitter,' you said

and returned to your cider.  I  read
the newspapers and said, 'Just like Paris.'
The apricot trees were in blossom and she said:
'Take me next time, OK?'

trinity times-ate                       by Paula Sheil       trinity times-ate



Songs 1 - 24                                                  

O, lips form a silent prayer

On peeling oranges
On braiding pigtails
On stroking cigars
On assuming jesus
On afternoon mending
On turning pages
On fitted silk stockings
On hearing your name
On lessoning god
On canyons and folding
On corners of the heart
On cat food and water biscuits
On phone messages
On tulips and irises
On starched sheets
On fat women heeding jesus
On storm drains
On carolinas
On men named harrod
On crew cuts
On treadmills
On night sweats with jesus

October, Spirits                                by Taylor Graham          Harmonics

We cup our hands around the possibility of fire.
Frost has nipped our ankles, touched a hunger
at the dug-up root. Headless roses can’t explain

how they ever could have been an easy beauty.
Dried herbs beg to be incense, or a witch’s brew,
pulverized and potent, and finally let fly

on wind and wishes. The shriek you heard
last night was nothing but a shrew being changed
in the horned-owl’s grasp; and in the field,

one misshapen pumpkin put aside
waits for everything it might become; waits
for someone to carve its own true face.

GIRL CAUGHT IN A PATH OF BLUE LIGHT        by Joyce Odam   Green Tango

Iridescent girl
in path of blue light
in cool attitude
her white stockings
flash a metallic hue.
I think
she is a dancer
or a lady of recent darkness;
I think she is a spy
for sorrows;
I think she knows
a secret
and will tell
only her day-dreamed lover
who looks through his
far, blue eye at her
and sends his shafts
of silent touch
to her patterned hands,
her dress,
her blue-white stockings.

INTO WINTER                              by Joyce Odam              

And when I go,
I will go as geese
calling softly into winter.
I will hear the sound of my soul
move through winds and darkness
and feel sad thoughts of men
touch me, as some dry mist
I must travel through;

and it will be a soaring,
like a remembering of dreams
when I flew wingless,
looking down on cities,
and moved as easily through
as the sea-buried
sliding through water.

In my transitory moment,
warmth and cold
will be one sensation. I will
shed pain from body and mind
in final molting,
and the sound of my last breath
will be like the migrating-murmur
of geese calling
softly into winter.

                             

(Published:  Portfolio Poets, 1963
Ina Coolbrith Anthology, 1963
Chapbook:  The Confetti Within, 1964
The American Bard (Page Poet) 1966
Poets Forum Magazine (Interview) 1999
Poets' Market 2000 (Insider Report)

APPLE BLOSSOMS AT EYE LEVEL     by Patricia Wellingham-Jones

The dirt road curls up like a twisted
ribbon dropped on a mountainside. A farm in tatters
survives beside a stream. Apple blossoms at eye level,
orchard below, pink buds rich with promise
spread in misty warmth.
The orchard once produced tons of dark
winy Hungarian fruit, so deep when polished
the apples were almost black. Stunted as the old trees,
today’s residents hunch thin shoulders
in faded shirts over root-matted soil. The children
scramble through branches like squirrels,
play dolls under the drooping boughs of a neighbor’s tree.
They chop firewood, muck out the stalls,
pelt each other with unripe apples.
Ride the school bus smelling of horse, and share
cigarettes and marijuana behind falling down barns.
Are they the last generation to live on the land?
Perhaps
some hazy spring morning we should stop and gaze
on apple blossoms at eye level
before they are gone.

Prince Edward Island                         by Norine Radaikin    Generation

It isn’t a good time of year to come to the island
my ninety-year-old Aunt Margaret wrote to me.
Better to come in summer than early spring.
But I came to see the snow fall,
and hear the crow calling early in the morning,
ride on red clay roads to the old farm
to see Cousin Jeanie’s spring lambs,
with the dead newborn lamb stretched out
alone, waiting to be buried.

My Uncle Dan went back to the island
the year he lost his leg at the shipyard.
Cousin Murdoch remembers seeing him,
his new wooden leg in a blue serge suit,
out in the fields digging potatoes.
I came back to see the snow fall on the island
one more time, Dan said.

As my grandparents, too, returned,
after the San Francisco earthquake, to raise
six children on a farm, earth almost too poor
to raise potatoes, now overgrown with blackberries.

It is my spring visit, icy waters
and a small black lamb lifted up for me
to hold, that I want to share.

It is the moment the spring lamb lives or dies,
the potato is first felt in the earth,
or the first snowfall is seen on the island
that we are haunted by our ancestors
and man becomes myth.

Blue Window, New Mexico                       by Jane Blue

Before I went out to the desert myself
someone sent me a postcard of it, a blue window
in a tan plastered wall, hollyhocks against it
and lace curtains inside.

There were no people in the picture, and I knew
that was what I wanted, the peace and quiet.
So I went, and you came with me,
but I sent you away.

Recently, someone asked me:
What would you do
if you had only one week to live?

I wouldn't go to New Mexico, now.
I'd stay right here and walk along the river,
because by the river is where I live.

This is supposing I could still walk.
If not, I'd lie here in this room
and doze, and dream.

The sun would shine in from the east
through my dusty mauve blinds, just
as it does now. Camellias would bloom
full in the yard, just as they do now.

And I would want you here,
to hold my hand, to rub my feet.
But not to speak.

hummingbird               by Joy Helsing

If I, like you,
could hover
on the edge of air,
flitter
lightly
here to there,
sample
flowers
everywhere,
and keep my flight
my own affair,
then I might find
I too could wear
invisible
wings                          

CLEANING THE STONES FROM                        by   Dianna Henning                        
THE JAPANESE WATER FOUNTAIN

One by one they tumble from my pail

into the potting sink where they’re hosed.

Some were found beached near the Irish Sea, others

were given me by children intrigued by their creaturely shapes.

Scum from moths fallen into the fountain

coats their undersides, turns them moss-like.

This cleansing of stone returned to the fountain

retunes water’s song as it chutes down the bamboo flute.

 
How perfectly solitude’s hollow bone pierces me,

call it hunger, call it longing, to stitch my mouth shut

so that I can hear strands of water

falling onto stones that stir with tiny hearts.