February - Poem 8
The House / Kristine Anderson
the one I used to live in, with the backyard
where my son once built a treehouse looking over
the weedy lawn and unruly privets,
the California house I moved from—
but not really that place, because dreams overlay
one experience onto fabrications—
I walked into this unreal house of white walls,
plush pristine carpet, indoor balcony overhanging
an empty living room (no guardrail!)
and turning in circles, searching for all the boxes
of books and clothes we’d moved out, overland
far away, months ago, seeing nothing . . . Then
voices wafted in—a mother’s humming, baby babbling—
fragrant presence of that other family who took over
this invented domicile, this not-the-house
I used to live in, and me suddenly beginning to understand how
white vacant rooms stood in for what I once fussed over—
weekly vacuuming and constant closet-cleaning—
bringing to mind how my child, now grown and gone,
and my own and my husband’s now growing old, overturn
& blessedly simplify my needs—a truth revealing itself
even as I woke up.
A Rose Is / Barbara Audet
Can it be
that two,
refuse to die,
rose bushes,
dictionary-worthy
see '"spindly,"
are in truth,
a garden?
Or are these
stalwart pair,
just a fool's--
where's my green thumb--
thorny episode?
Fileable
under the heading,
fat chance?
Is it oxymoronic
to say rose garden,
when a rose
is not a rose
when they merely rise,
petals lurking
despite me?
One blooms by surprise
even in the pitch of winter,
in a spotty, odd profusion
of fluttering ivory
while my back
is turned.
One blooms on occasion,
a birthday or last Christmas.
I suspect, this one may have
a datebook
hidden in the ground
that owns its roots.
January's frost took out
the basil and the bougainvillea.
I am bereft of parsley.
Lilies tried to hide
in the shallows of the rose
and these are gone.
Each rose once
had a name,
long forgotten.
One is a red.
One is white.
Like wine bought
at the grocery store
for quick consumption.
Wine with twist off caps.
No corks.
That's all I know.
Still they grow,
my minor landscaped realm,
and by default,
I am ever rose queen.
Ode to Blues / Bee Cordera
Freedom music so full of soul
we can't help but reconnect with ancestors
and world where we all belong.
Blues is the music of togetherness,
Of family blues is the music of true love.
THE FIRST THIRD / Ashby Logan Hill
And all this just to get back to what my mind held? “A sleepless sanctuary,” I said.
And first at finding, on a road in July in Moab, climbing by petroglyphs another thing untethered, winding out from the mind, something you hold onto for whatever reason but now knowing you must let go of yet, everything you once stood for not loosed out, at thirty five, and still seventy years more till the earth will shake you from it, a love you had and walking back from the parking lot around the corner just for the moment
to show you how everything’s connected — you didn’t want to be dead but the hundred degree plus heat was determined to make sure of it. We got a hotel and stayed up
all night, our bodies intertwined like stardust because we knew we didn’t have another second, at least this is what we thought at least, at least two fingers more for a shot of
whiskey and the condensation on the mirror from the heat of us and our breaths.
Later that morning we both woke early to read in our books. We smiled as if we knew there soon to be a child inside, what we didn’t know yet we’d lose two Julys later.
We didn’t want but had to see what both of us knew of loss the morning after.
Refuge / Amy Marques
claim hope
honor and live
a wilderness: luxurious
under daylight
well-satisfied, qualified in this
new philosophy to live brightly
observed
the Refuge of many.
Yoga poems I wrote in my head / Sonia Sophia Sura
Yoga poems I
wrote in my
head,
4 poems,
the first about
softening
and how I wanted to punch the air
because I needed to
soften
into
this body
of earth
and forgive.
The second was
about
the different lengths
of time.
One hour has
different lengths.
One hour of yoga is
five hours.
One hour with
a lover
is
forever
and not
long
enough.
The third poem
was unremarkable,
I guess,
or about my
sadness
knowing
I wouldn’t
remember it.
A Sijo for Stars / Samuel Spencer
In the sky, galaxies wave with hands made of exploding light.
I wave back from a blue Earth, hands made of flesh, blood warm and red.
But no – I am left unseen because waving stars have no sky.
