02 October, 2011

 
Windfall

When she objected that the bedroom
was too hot that summer day
for what I had proposed and suggested
we create a spectacle of ourselves
for the audience of trees and shrubs
in our backyard, I had forgotten
about the apples.

And when we spread wide open
the sheet and sleeping bag on the grass,
out of sight (mostly) of the road,
and released our entire bodies,
piece by piece of clothing,
into the arms of the air
(which, unaccustomed to such
an opportunity, puffed excitedly),
I was not thinking at all
of the apples.

And even when we laid ourselves down
and sanctified that country acre as it had
long deserved to be sanctified,
sending birds racing between trees
while the whole world gathered itself
in her eyes, into which I looked and looked,
I did not see the apples.

But later that afternoon,
as I carried our clothes toward the house,
and she, walking ahead of me, stopped
to pick up a windfall apple and tasted it,
declaring it delicious and urging me
to take a bite, I most certainly noticed
not only the apple but the garden
surrounding it, like a scene
from a familiar story, one including
a man happy in his skin and a woman as
tall and shapely as she was naked--

naked, that is, except for the Raybans,
which she'd slipped on when she went
to get us each a beer after our holy
expense of energy and which,
with their Vogue-like stylish incongruity,
saved me from an insufferably poetic moment
and let me enjoy the very apple
that the apple was.

~ ~ Philip Dacey

First published in Cider Press Review, 2004

 

"Windy Lake"
Photographer Rezi Vasiri



Night draws me open ::    I work like a seed ::
building my tree through the depths


Stage Directions

Place setting
Sun left

Enter full
Moon right

No dialogue

Necessary.

~ ~ Vassilis Zambaras
Golden Rule

In a forgotten drawer
my father’s wooden rule,
brass-hinged to unfold
sideways and lengthways
for measuring boat timbers.

I hear the slap and click
of its closing,
before I can say ‘lifeboat’,
see it vanish
into that long pocket
on the thigh of blue overalls.

Indicator of his precision
love of numbers
a life measured
in feet and inches
business takings
cricket scores
football pools
bingo calls.

His emotions kept in check,
marked off by pencil,
held in columns,
buttoned up in cardigans,
till an outburst
a sea-squall soon past.

Now he’s gone to talk
spans and cubits
and dead-reckoning with Noah.

Margaret Eddershaw

First published in Iota, 2007


broken wheel
the drunken rounds we sing
to celebrate life

~ ~ Rick Daddario
Poets Nova

Our thoughts are like dancers, two
inter-mingled, co-existing electrons
spinning around the same nucleus.
Our hearts, the pulsars at the center of
this rich, red, universe.  Roses clinched
between orbiting lips that circle a black
planet obscured by an eclipsing moon.
I wonder if wishing sets thoughts in motion,
causing invisible ripples in the unseen.
Ripples that carry our secrets to God.

I consider all these things from my bar stool,
the poet's throne.  A magical chair with roots
that grows limbs and a mind of its own.

~ ~ Charles P. Ries
There is water to be found ::
               where the tired self sleeps ::
                              we are made of faraway places



Autumn of a Lepidopterist

On edge

Of buckling, weathered
Red-tiled roof,

Orange-brown and black
Veined monarch trembling,

Like a leaf.

~ ~ Vassilis Zambaras
Photographer:   Sue McDonagh


Ana Becho'ach

I say a prayer in a language I can't read
from a world in which I struggle
to a god,
that I wish to understand.

Listening from left to right
I repeat and repeat
until the words link,
until each belong to each other.

Perhaps I have just understood my solitude
and like the words and god
we are,
all part of each other

~ ~ Simon Bridges

PoetrySpaceNews
, July 2011
 
Dying before the leaves of autumn ::
I shall grow stronger in forgotten lands

 



Dance of death :: sound of the flute ::
the fields swept bare of me


~ ~ Grant Hackett
Improvise

What if the word that I want,
the word so precise in its meaning,
the one that I need
for the thought I am wanting to think,
does not exist?
What then?
Can I still think it?
Or will I be able
to improvise?

And what if words that I want do exist,
but harbour insurgents,
harsh malcontents and saboteurs
who use innuendo
subverting the meanings,
gathering round them
the most undesirable words,
can it be there's a way
to improvise truth from their lies,

creating my meanings
from new combinations,
making it up
whilst I'm making my way?
And what if the thought
has the shape of a word
but is empty of meaning,
cuts a space for new thinking,
can I satisfy it with my makeshift devices?

~ ~ Dave King
Untitled 2001
Artist:  Graham Lambkin


Freedom

To some
death is freedom.
To others
breath is.

~ ~  Alaka Yeravadekar