February - Poem 22
Skyline / Kristine Anderson
From a boat in the harbor, I se the city’s skyline
like irregular cubes against the negative space
of the cloudy afternoon, and here and there a steeple.
In kindergarten, around words we drew boxes
to show the shapes of letters. Around the word book
I’d draw a tall line above the b, a low board
across the oo, and around the k another tall merlon.
My dash-lined pad took on the look of battlements,
as do the rooftops of skyscrapers in the metropolis
seen from miles away on a boat in the bay. Or perhaps
it’s words floating up from crowds of busy people
until stuck against the clouds, forming shapes of parapets.
Real Existence / Barbara Audet
“We are all captives of the picture in our head—our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.” Walter Lippmann
Which of my memories most succeed?
My father playing tennis in long pants and a strangely short-sleeved shirt at Bass Lake, in Indiana, where we cooked fresh-caught perch, curled into Army cots and listened to WLS.
Which of my memories most succeed?
Mom singing in a suburban store window in Park Forest, in a satiny pastel dress, her voice hitting high C or was it E, one of the Chansonettes, founded in 1954, just like me.
Which of my memories most succeed?
Jim building a fort or a geiger counter, wearing a plaid shirt with mismatched shorts, while swimming a mile for an Eagle Scout badge, while flying a kite a mile high for days on a bet.
Which of my memories most mislead?
I was not playing tennis but took a picture of Dad swinging that racket. I had never seen him swing a racket before and never would see him swing one ever again. Was that real?
Which of my memories most mislead?
I was so small when Mom sang, a woman who often would break out into song, at a piano with my Dad, yet every year, the music seemed to break out less and less. Was her song ever real?
Which of my memories most mislead?
Jim the eldest of us all. The tinkerer, shipbuilder brother, who climbed a thousand-foot tower to plant a flag and turn electrons into images. Were those brief as electric shock pictures real?
They say out in space, if you go far enough, radio signals, TV signals exist just waiting to be caught again, a reality that can exist only if the magic can be captured at just the right time once again. All Dad’s volleys. All Mom’s songs. All Jim’s steps. Captives of the vacuum that is outside my experience but nevertheless real as it slumbers well inside my smallest part of the universe.
On love / Bee Cordera
We stand at the snowy the edge
watching a blue and warm river
carve forever through red stone canyon
Burros lug around home, food,
needful things starting their day
as the sun rises. Like us they follow
the man made trail that hugs the canyon rim
going straight towards the river. Trail markers
along the path warn "once you go down
you must come back up." A race that starts, before
the sunrise, against the sunset.
Rogue Angel / Ashby Logan Hill
“I love you like the dew at break of dawn.” “I love you like the morning tide fading.”
I am the ring around the rosies and pockets full of ash, the bitter clash
between God up in heaven. I am the dirt and the mud, the fire and wine,
I am the stars and the sky and everything all at once, the dark that
becomes the whirlwind of nothing, the dark-wet leaves of pavement
and the willow trees, the dream like angler fish’s devilish hanging light,
like a lantern that weeps in its own sorrows for lack of sight. I am the
illumination of things, the door jam, melancholy. How can an angel with
no wings fly? Fallen down to go underground? I am the rogue angel
that whispers to you in the night. I am what is needed to make you hear
the sweet music of my lute, to remind myself of good times, cavernous
heat-breaths bound from clouds. You stood and waited for me at the crossroads.
I hovered above the reddening earth and hot gashes of wounded sand.
It was the rain in the night, the early morning light that saved us.
Solitude / Amy Marques
A solitude may originate:
listening
to our lives
stopping
to ask
and hear.
A memorable interval.
Source Material: A Tale of Two Cities
I am so tired / Sonia Sophia Sura
my brain feels like mush.
I want that feeling
I’ll get in the future,
when I’m with my partner
(can I get a hint where we’ll meet?)
in our house on the shore.
We are restful for months.
There are months to our name,
weeks marked on the calendar that
just say, “rest and enjoy the day!”
I want that feeling that will
inevitably come,
where everything that is
still possible for me in this life
that is righteous and best,
materializes.
There, I am facing the ocean and
I am saying, “I understand. It’s
all perfect. It’s all perfect.”
I am visiting my past self
and saying, “don’t worry.
It will all work out. Enjoy
your day. Enjoy your now.”
A Poem with My Brother and Dad / Samuel Spencer
Peaks wave white flags of misting snow
As sheets of ice reach to meet the sun.
My mind gets lost within my soul,
A snow-dawned mountain wanting undress.
The son's embrace that melts the frozen heart–
A still small speck, but I the whole.
