d. ellis phelps, senior editor
Rachel Aguirre, associate editor
Celebration of Floral Familiars
~Jennifer Lagier
It’s good to acclimatize ourselves to the ordinary, lest we suffer the absence of the sublime.
I celebrate an epidemic of yellow oxalis,
common coastal weed that invades
creek beds, wetlands, planters.
Guileless saffron blooms
soak up golden sunshine.
Wildflowers resurrect after rain.
Poppies and alyssum compete
with fragrant pink and lavender hyacinth.
Volunteer johnny jump-ups
spread cream and purple silks,
line my brick walkway.
I lust after exotic rhododendrons,
pampered azaleas, fragile camellias.
However, in my drought tolerant garden,
hordes of renegade Peruvian lilies
relentlessly invade, overpower lantana,
push aside emerging hydrangeas.
Morning’s Surprise
~Jennifer Lagier
Gold bleeds around kitchen curtains.
Peach sunlight leaks between angular pines.
I rinse overripe blackberries,
blend them with spinach, pineapple, melon,
healthy buffer to handfuls of pills.
When I open front door to let out the dogs,
hummingbirds chirrup, explode from silver sage,
dive-bomb whoever interrupts fuchsia feasting.
Red squirrels tight wire across power lines,
descend telephone pole, invade patio, yard.
On the corner, adolescent wild turkeys gather,
scuff aside mulch to breakfast on grubs.
Cotton tail bunnies disappear inside sticky monkey snarls.
I meander sandy trail toward glistening beach,
admire lupine bounty, meditate upon whispering surf.
~Jennifer Lagier
Cambria Fog
Charcoal mist clutches rocky coastline,
blurs the distinction between sky and ocean.
Vapor cascades surge from boulder strewn shore,
erase golden meadow, winding trails, ragged trees.
Drizzle bejewels fat appendages of Hottentot fig.
Salt-infused dampness etches glass overlooking black surf.
Strings of pelicans manifest, swoop beneath foggy scrim.
Nocturnal raccoons return to well-hidden lairs.
The dogs and I shake off morning stupor,
emerge to explore dripping, mysterious world.
if beauty were a simple clock
~Terry Dawson
if beauty were a simple clock,
we might not hear a single drop
if drops of rain contained a tick,
our tocking hearts would long for wet
if long meant precise, extended ending,
the rose might never drop its petals
if dropping meant to exact depth,
water might never attempt a swallow
if swallows refrained from sudden sailing,
would time unspring in ruptured pause?
does spring fuss to measure blossoms
— beauty so much as glimpse her watch?
she seldom does as random sows
its winsome, willy-nilly seeds as when
sun cedes to shade in fresh-plowed fields
— birds perched above like notes on wires
that form a score wired to our souls —
new each time a flock arrives
but if beauty were a simple clock,
we might not hear a single drop
beauty in the mouth of the imbiber
~Terry Dawson
…once more you’re lost
in something I can merely see
…my plate’s gleaming, teeming emptiness.
-Christian Wiman
I have coriandered
into wide seas of soups
and tacked across woks
on tall sails of leeks
only tongues can wind
their way through a garden
and wrap round the globe
to ferry victuals home
savor wages peace;
tart, sweet and spicy sign
resolutions of unity
on fields once riven by walls
so pass the salt and the hot sauce
peel an orange, slice a loaf
coriander, paprika, sage, fennel and bay
your way into embracing what alien
taste the language of love
dug from foreign soil
cast away upon wonder
in spoonfuls and morsels
as beauty must exact her pound,
forego the food of comfort
to sample the wildly edible
and seal our incredible bonds
ply the strange and the sumptuous
with your belly as bow
stay for dinner and save us
say my name with your plate
ekphrastic trash
~Terry Dawson
artistic veneration neglected, the junk
of old boards in the palm of our back yard
still enjoys our second story porch, a gawky
giraffe, offering, as to her young, a
hovering protection set aside for nothing,
these rejects huddle, clattering
only in their own mind to desperately
express need for a tribute
they might have been, after all, a
clubhouse refuge for restless kids or a
shed to house our rusting push mower
they might have coaxed a blaze
radiating a story-high rage of warmth
overlooked potential still seeks its poem —
recognition for its patience, if nothing else
this woodpile holds the dust, the rain,
the days as they pass and
press themselves into each splintering
gasp for recognition of
its trashy, restive beauty
is not remaining still a worthy
metaphor in a context of dizzying change?
the carrying of the wear of years
paints a masterpiece beyond utility
so praise to you, our trashy boards, hoarding
spiders and havening vermin your layers of grey,
warped and unadorned, enchant us with what might have
been as well as with your fierce resistance
Another Country
~David Radavich
You’d never know
this is America, too.
I meander through
the rose garden
on the serpentine path
and marvel at
blooms in late July
still clinging
and bringing heart
almost as high
as I and fragrant
everywhere in the air
so all we see is
wonder and wonder,
one passport
after another—
white, yellow, red,
a diplomatic
shade of tangerine—
and this is not
the world we know,
its violence and trespass
cruel and without care
but a place redemptive,
encompassing, that
many hands have tended
these many years,
all the time
I’ve ventured here
always first, before
any appointment
or meal or chore,
just this walk of glory
that gives us—oh, visa—
a different story.
On Mendelssohn’s Sextet
~David Radavich
This is the music God listens to.
When He or She or All
is tired of being omnipresent,
omniscient, or omnipotent,
just relaxing in the gleam
of galaxies, savoring
impossible fingers flying
over the keyboard,
scales and arpeggios
and strings aflutter
that shake loose all loss
and make it leap,
the kind of genius
that dies young
and knows itself
among the angels
in chorus
with the cosmos,
heavenly accord.
This Pot
~David Radavich
contains the world
of its people.
Hard red clay
shaped by chapped hands
opening the sky
begging to be filled,
sweetgrass
around the rim
woven by women
redolent of love.
An eagle feather
points to worlds beyond.
Now it sits
on our bookcase,
Native wisdom
linking time and space,
reminding us
of earth,
the deep
imminence of art.
in the video
~Brigid Cooley-Beck
the lily blooms quickly
and the orchid
blossoms with ease
the videographer
chooses to eliminate
the behind-the-scenes
footage of patient gardeners
watering and fertilizing over
time, lapses
in their judgment
occasionally resulting in
pruning, cutting away
the dead bits, sick petals
ugly parts, proof of life
instead, he highlights
bursts of color, extraordinary
flowering beauty, ever lush
`
leaving us to wonder
whether it’s only our garden
that takes work, needs time
on gratitude
~Brigid Cooley-Beck
my latest poem is a grocery list.
filled with deliciously short sentences,
like “hashbrowns” and “bacon bits.”
lines of olfactory phrases
stacked neatly,
corresponding with my weekly weave
through the aisles.
certainly lacking in the
alliteration department
but, often,
my most evocative work.
lately, i am seeking poetry
in everyday tasks.
folding the laundry.
sweeping the floor.
loading the dishwasher.
i figure finding beauty in monotony
has everything to do with healing.
and so, i fixate
on the tucks of tee-shirts.
imagine the pan pixie dust full.
lull myself to sleep with sounds of water
rushing through my appliances.
this, my abundance
of muses.
it was wrong of me,
not to be grateful.
the poet before me
~Brigid Cooley-Beck
underlined his favorite sentences
in pencil — mechanical, by the looks of it
me, i long for my neon highlighter
forgotten accidentally upon
the haphazard home desk
i wonder which pages are still steeped with
his fingerprints — what his voice sounds like
and did he whisper his favorite parts out loud?
he took care with the lines i find
mundane — one man’s trash,
a woman’s treasure
how i value this other perspective
etched between the lines, in the margins
is it not undoubtedly intimate,
to witness the map of his heart?
cliff likes this rhyme
and i, the one below
Standing at the Edge of the Woods
~Ann Howells
I consider the bones of trees,
erect with military bearing or leaning against the wind.
Some split near the base, like co-joined twins.
I consider their bark, brown or grey, rough or smooth,
patterned or plain. Palo alto green and madrone, red.
Globe pear round as a lollipop. Acacia flat as a tabletop.
Sycamores celebrating freeform.
Many trunked banyan dropping roots from the sky.
Narrow Lombardy poplars; gnarled apple trees;
and aspen graceful and slim as young ballerinas,
fingers stretching to ensnare cloud.
Some, like willows, bend in sorrow; others spread wide,
assure each incipient leaf its place in the sun.
I contemplate their skeletons
splayed against a winter sky as a doctor contemplates X-rays
held to a light box, searching for a break,
seeking a tumor of mistletoe. Myself. The trees.
Our kinship, more likenesses than differences.