February - Poem 23
Preparing for the Storm / Kristine Anderson
Grocery shopping. Check. Aisles crowded
with locals doing exactly what I’m doing,
thinking, What will we eat if the power goes out?
My answer: Hard-cooked eggs. Muffins. Meatloaf.
Oh—and cookies. Cookies will save
us. (Baking: something else to do today.)
Full tank of gasoline in the car. Check.
Probably won’t be able to get on the road
even if we want, but who knows? Just in case.
Shoveling the rest of old snow from the patio. Check.
Icy, hard, piled in the middle like a pathetic
snowman. Need a patch of ground for the dog.
(Hope we can open the slider during the storm.)
Breaking up chunks of snow. Pitching weird
snowballs over the fence, into the woods.
After all the effort to get ready, I’ll need two
days on the sofa, feet up, eyes staring out
the window, watching snowfall
and fall
and fall.
Best Friends / Barbara AudetUnderneath the crescent moon,
bolted in the stark, clear sky,
I walk.
Often dog-encumbered to keep me
grounded.
The leash from man to beast
employed to restrain unspooling
odd thoughts.
Riots in the brain belie
plain tugging on from stone to plant,
forward.
We cover a quick terrain on foot,
one's fur, one's coat, on defense
this night.
The limitations of the walk head
us back, routine besting straying into
danger.
And as always, I am safely in the doorway,
unattaching only a physical connection, never
our bond.
BLUE-BLACK VISION / Ashby Logan Hill
It was the rain in the night, the early morning light that saved us.
A snowfall came and blessed the banks of the river before disappearing.
I call to say “I love you” in the afternoon and wait to see again your smile.
“March,” you said. “Like the navy, milkshake sky.” I want to hold her
in my arms forever, like how we eat the sun, an orange peel or two.
In our arms forever we hold the sun. “Who knows with all this warming
what becomes of us on the earth after we die?” Where will you be
sitting?” “Somewhere on a blue-black cloud?” I want to go back to the
moment in rain outside the restaurant, embrace like two willows
touching each other’s bark and gather together our beaming branches.
“Saplings,” you said. “”Together we hold what the two of us can do.”
She opens up like a flower, a warm spring bud, back-lit in the wind.
I stand there dancing like a sunflower. “Sunflowers,” I said.
“I was wondering when you’d come back up to see me.”
Annoyance / Amy Marques
I am annoyed
by a man's
opinion.
You approve?
I thought you would
this time
yes.
I have looked
it in the face, take
care.
Find a way.
An Erasure poem. Source Material: A Tale of Two Cities
Living in the Dream / Samuel Spencer
It’s been nearly a month
since I’ve been home to the place
I live, years since I’ve been home
to the place I belong.
I grow further distant
as the decadence chips away
my longing to live close
to the earth. Every flight
I lose something once
mine: a toothbrush, a book, a
memory – it all swirls and fades
in the slipstream of the jet.
I know I’ll have to stop this
movement one day, and accept
the place I knew all those years
ago is too far gone, though it
hasn’t moved an inch.
