So Here I Am

~Raymond Byrnes

back on the bench beside tall twin cedars. 
The stream slides over slabs and burbles 	
through shards of lava stone that spread 
and cooled before time was measured.

All winter back East, I pictured being
here again, settling into silence once the 
last hiker ambles past, settling into the late
afternoon glow of waxed green cedar fronds.

So here I am, where some would say one’s 
backpack of anxieties and expectations should
be set aside to pause, inhale forest air
and meditate in shaded stillness, but  

it can be important to settle for much less, like
a breeze wandering through treetops, warblers 
flitting branch to branch, faint tapping from the
woods, some bench rest for these old bones.



“So Here I Am” appeared previously in 3rd Wednesday

Where

~Charles Darnell


~Inspired by Rabindranath Tagore


Where the road is straight
And pointed,
Where the trees
Are always full,
Where the holy are anointed,
And they wear the sacred wool.

Where the innocent
Are cared for,
Where there’s comfort
For the old, 
Where the mournful
Healed of heartsore,
And the lost in from the cold.

Where the rivers run
So sweetly,
Where the sky is clear 
And blue,
Where lovers love discreetly
Beneath a western yew.

Where dreams are not shameful,
Your work 
A source of pride,
Where the poor are not blameful,
And sympathy the guide.

Where war is not a motto,
Where peace the prized key,
Where love rules all tomorrows,
Let my country be.

"Where" first appeared in Building Bridges-Making Peace Anthology, 2017

Wild Things

~Charlotte Hamrick

I planted milkweed seeds over a year ago
not knowing it would take almost as much time
for the tiny plants to flourish. I learned patience,
such as it is in my impatient nature. Late in the fall
the tiny plants began to grow just when all else
began to sleep. It seems they had minds of their own
like the sea that cannot be tamed. She ruffles
her delicate fingers on shore one day, tosses
impatience in fistfuls on another. The beauty
of sea and plant draws us like fireflies to twilight.
My milkweed hovered through spring and summer,
people huddle next to the sea, all of us looking
for our vision of home, for our place to be wild.

In the Wind River Range

~Carol Kanter



Come spring, dog-sleds alone transverse this world,
which rouses from deep sleep impatient, furled
in change.   Before it slithers out of reach,
etch in memory its clean, stark peace:

The scenery bids no honest artist use
those bright primary yellows, reds or blues;
the palette’s softest colors must suffice
to convey subtleties of ice.

Oh painter, conjure gently rolling sprawls
and the packed down path that wends between white walls
where winter has begun its March retreat
exposing early mud in spots beneath.

Limn next the nearby towering lodge pole pines
that, at attention, stand knee-deep in lines 
along the dappled walls, their forest hair
no longer helmeted but newly bare

and though not one brief wisp of wind complains,
no pit marks show a recent strafing rain,
their branches let drop epaulettes of snow,
small accretions for the walls below.

Each silent fall pulls gauging eyes off track
from trunks that show as verticals, in black.
Beyond, draped fields unrolls a white expanse  
scarred by a sudden sign, Buried Fence,

whose wooden stakes peek up in vee’s, exhumed
here and there, like sutures on the wounds
of heroes who in spirit now reside
behind this stretch and up that mountainside

where a mammoth gray escarpment looms on high
to intercept the smooth vast cobalt sky,
a trapezoid whose crevices of stone
clutch what tracks of winter it yet owns:

low patches flash such deltoid symmetry
they could be used to teach geometry—  
while traces on the highest ridge devise
a wayward horizontal stress.  Here lies

               
Valhalla.  On noiseless watch the gods patrol 
these jagged parapets, while Death calls roll.
Enigmatic when or why they came.
They show no face, give out no name

but listen to the stainless runners glide
and crunch the crystal snow.  They hear and bide
the panting dogs, the absent wind,
vibrations from the clash of steel, the sins

that stalk the world.   And though the wind may sigh 
gods never interfere.  On high  
they watch. They chip the white rime from their minds 
and view the peaceful elegance of hues and lines.

Ars Poetica: San Antonio, Texas on January 21, 2025

~Rachel Aguirre, Contributing Editor



Rare snowfall. 		           The stiff ground 

dusted 

       with the stuff. 

Ungloved fingers 	              drag

                  across         car hoods, 

slick sidewalk              ,

     street gutter, 

                    gather

                                                   what cream they can  




*Previously published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Editor’s Choice Award

On Erosion

~Tara Prakash

I bend down to kiss the grass and call it prayer.
My jeans smudge with dirt at the kneecaps. Behind me, the swing set groans with age.
I say I love this place out loud, how
sprawled out here, I can feel the world’s soily belly
breathe alongside mine. The fat red-white woodpecker

At the edge of the field beats bark into heartbeat, lined up with my own.
I don’t think I am any different from this place. The cloud above me
looks like the dome of a button mushroom, a large curved puff of white.
Maybe when I am old

And lying on my bed beneath a cardinal red comforter, and my chest feels filled with sticky
sap, and my voice croaks like a yellow-bellied bullfrog by the lakeside,
I will wake up and the blue river veins in my hand will be pressed
Into smooth brown skin again and I will be sprawled out here on the grass,

Inhaling honeysuckle, and wind will brush away my hair like a mother’s
Hand. Maybe right now, if I ask for rain, the clouds will break open
Like the leaves hugging the arm of the willow pinned to the edge of my childhood playground, where years ago I climbed high enough to let the sun hit my throat, where I held the branch and leaned forward, my sweaty palms pressed against the coarse skin, the bark-covered body holding me like a promise, where I swung toward the ground,

Where I dropped to soft soil and ran, my small body tumbling
into tall grass, where I stopped, crouched, to let my footsteps catch up to me,
My shadow stretched by afternoon sun, my breath stumbling into breeze.

Wind breaks the cloud above me into wispy strands of white.
The sky spins and the crescent moon moves with it.
Supple bodies always crack with age. River erodes rock. This is how the world is.

Passage to India

~Darlene Logan

 Mosque
Take off your shoes
Step in and feel the crazy gone
Kneel on holy ground
 
Caves
Enter the unknown
Take your single match to strike
You are alone with your self
 
Temple
Hold baby Krishna in your arms, butter on your tongue
Dance with all into the spring rains and your golden rebirth
Be at peace--it will happen