An Intensification of the Senses
~Benjamin Green
For the old man,
Each and every day
Names a ball of clay
Ready to be shaped,
Or hot metal hammered
On an anvil, sharpened
To an edge—
Every dawn he looks around,
Decides what belongs to him
And to what he belongs.
Convergence, divergence, both
Cause each other.
The hummingbird at the feeder knows,
Never travels in a straight line.
How to fathom that mind, to even
Keep it still for one minute of study?
He stands at the window,
Feels the woodstove heat his body,
Watches juniper branches bend under snow:
Dark against a dove gray sky,
flakes floating at sunrise.
Why They Are Sometimes Called Angel Trumpets
~Rebecca A. Spears
Moonflowers in the next-door garden light up the circular drive. Nocturnal sphinx-moths, mosquitoes, and ground-nesting bees halo them. No wonder the hoary bat and evening bat love these angel trumpets guiding them to dinner. I’d always planned a twilight garden, white with moonflowers, sweet alyssum, veronica, night-blooming jasmine. And for contrast, silver sage, lamb’s ear, dusty miller. Yet I’m only an admirer of gardens and gardeners. They remind me that bliss floats while sadness sinks. Remember the day we sunned for hours on warm limestone boulders until purple dusk called out the bats? We packed up quickly to get out of their way. On the walk home, the towering moonflowers opened to us the first time. We were careless then, not knowing what bats were good for or how the night could light itself or how brief the bloom of angel trumpets.
I Walk By An Old Woman Picking Sunflowers from Her Garden
~Lynne Burnett
Helianthus—hierophant, swims in its own skies,
climbs though there is nothing to hang onto,
climbs because there is nothing to hold it back,
thirsting perhaps for what is beyond reach.
Halo of seeds—dreams flung forth? After all,
from them is shaped the bounty of a life,
from them, story after story told, like once
a perky pony-tailed girl swaggered in jeans.
I see her in the leather of the old woman’s face
as she smiles, oblivious to me, hums in the heat.
Grasps now a skyward stem, cradles a golden
head. August is holy with old afternoons.
Holy is the lucent pause of a woman’s body,
sunflower speaking from the pulpit of a vase.
Trolling
~Lynne Burnett
Grey water, grey clouds,
and their vague ambitions for the day:
rain that starts, then stops,
a tidal bleed of waters that makes
a salmon go for a pink lure and ride,
we think, the elevator of a hook
up onto the fiberglass floor of our boat.
Except that the salmon gets off early
and the hook with the barb
filed down
dangles in the air a moment
like an upside-down question mark
as if to say, do you want to eat
or play fair?
Gulls circle, cacophonous.
Large raindrops smack the surface
of the water again, making more circles.
The deep water deepens.
And the line goes back down.
Nothing to do but chug along
at two knots and wait for another strike.
My mind drifts, sinks into blood hum
and heart murmur, the roll call of cells
of a body at rest. Nothing to do
but give each moment its hour,
watch a raindrop inherit the ocean
into which it falls, catch the pearly
shimmer of Indra’s net.
Indra: Hindu god of thunder, war, and rain
Contemplation
~Lynne Burnett
draws me into its folds
of silence,
becomes a robe I can wear,
many-hued.
Untie the sash
and it falls open
in every language:
arms that want to hold you.
Still Life
~Ken Gierke
Swallowed by still air,
my kayak sits in the shade of
maples and sycamores.
The sound of my shifting feet
carries through the water to reach
turtles sunning on a fallen tree
that rises from the water.
The turtles drop, one by one,
their splashes sending ripples
that lap against my kayak, almost
rocking it in this almost still life
beheld, held by my eyes, a watercolor
of words, poetry in motion.
Unity
~Ken Gierke
Imagine the self, contained.
I say mosaic, and you know
what I mean, even if you don’t
see it the same way. Inference
is in your eye and mine,
a connection, an intersection of
thought irrespective of any perspective.
Entanglement meant to be
considered, not taken for granted.
Granted that any space can be
shared space. Coexistence
without resistance. Naturally
interwoven, not chosen. We may not
be one and the same, but we are one.
Wizened Woman of the Trees
~Jean Hackett
Atop a high desert ridge,
Wise Woman
wraps herself
in sheaths of wizened bark,
protected from mountain sun’s white blaze.
Bent in deference to prevailing winds,
she holds her ground by rooting deep,
an ancient fertility goddess
crowned in viridian,
ruling as queen
of a biblically parched land.
Body swaying heavy with seed,
she is blessed as Sarah’s aged womb
by God’s promise
to send rivers that call forth
flowing green fields
from parched desert soil.
Generosity branches
as she shares her bounty
of berries and shade
with coyote and scrub jay,
honeycomb-dense sap
with native peoples
for ceremonial blessings.
Lone one-seed juniper,
a mother tree,
teaching all who watch and listen
how to thrive in hot, dry places.
Unexpected Romance
~Jean Hackett
Ponderosa Pine,
you are a temptress
whose astringent pheromones
summon intrepid beetles
to tunnel beneath
your weather-rasped skin
and lure hapless tourists
to summit breathless peaks.
It was easy to ignore
the possibility of your caress,
as I scoured mulch-damp ground
for perfect cones worth bundling
into cinnamon-spritzed Christmas displays
or squirrel away for bored children
to slather in peanut butter and sprinkled seeds
for winter-starved cardinals.
But when my face grazed
your morning-chilled bark,
vanilla softness flooded nose
and lips with sugar cookie desire,
drenching me in familiar tincture
spiked with surprise.
Duality of Beauty
~Nwefuru Godstime Chiadikobi
I crush the herbs and watch the steam rise,
its scent reminds me of girls with oceans in their laughter,
how they bloomed and burned in the same breath.
Beauty was the fever that never slept,
a gold-faced saint and a cunning thief.
It gave, it took,
and it never said sorry.
I once chased it through mistakes and mouths,
called it truth,
until I found its shadow eating mine.
Now, when I look into a mirror,
one image glows like morning star,
the other grins—patient, hungry, real.
The young think beauty is a crown,
but it’s a hook dressed in perfume.
It catches light and leaves scars.
Even the skin remembers;
the wrinkles form maps of old mistakes.
I see mine and exclaim,
“a permanent distraction,
a lie that aged with grace”.