One Piece by Andrew H. Oerke

Time Takes it Easy in the Shade of a Grape Arbor

Actually, Time is a regular visitor here.
She’s rich, relaxed and charming in a chair
in the shade of a trellis, or she strolls
in a peignoir of stardust, or in broad daylight
among the columns n porches of the ageing past.

The sun’s honey-hive is oozing over.
Golden bees plunder the buckwheat and drone
back n forth like small trolleys jammed with ore.
And when Sleeping breathes heavy, a patient
hunting for his way out of a coma,
Time, the suave medico in sunglasses, bows,
and like a magician removes the dream
as if it were a poultice, and you wake up.
Morning yawns, rolls over, and calls out your name.
You are the one, after all. You are the one.

{Poem by Andrew H. Oerke}

A Piece by Jeff Steinle

Heart's Lair

Before inhabiting personality was in the womb
To when the chemicals of this body lie entombed
And in between when daily
Vague nonsensical memories
Splintered pictures
Sniper insights
Wounded eyes
Watch the lewd spoof that is love
Crowd mind
And block my reverence for release
Forming life's inclement ruckus
Bitter odyssey surrounding
Heart's lair
Inscape of love and gratitude
Building ensnaring word castles
Of experienced grief on meth
At release enthralled
From bodily sand castle death

{Poem by Jeff Steinle}

One Poem by Caroline Crawford

Living Revealed

In our quest
to create
one
elegant future

Save your impressive
civilized
one of a kind
earth

Sacrifice was born
atop the frigid
summit
of wildlife

When you can add
laughter to
your people you
can rely on a river

Everyday is Earth day
clawing its way
to a mate

You can’t prevent a
flood but you
can prevent a
disaster

The interactive produce
the best
enjoy the sound
even more

{Poem by Caroline Crawford}

Two Poems by Kaitlin Brey

My Life

Her love is the universe.
Never ending
Going on forever in all directions
Over spans of time and space.
Her love is a safety net.
Protecting me
Catching me when I fall
And never letting me go.
Her love is an adrenaline rush.
Anxiety and longing
Pushing and pulling on my heart
As it beats faster than ever.
Her love is like the end of a sappy movie.
All tears of joy and love struck teens.
Her love is my number one priority.
Her love is my life.


Significance

We sit in silence
In the darkness surrounding.
So still, so quiet
Only the sound of breath
Can be heard in the air.
We look at each other
And there is no need for words
As our lips curve towards the sky
And our gazes smile at each other.
With astonishing beauty
Your lips slowly open
And three meaningful words
Escape, and pound into my heart.
“I love you too” is what I say,
In return.
And your grin grows bigger
As our fingers intertwine
And sleep washes over us
Til morning.

{Poetry by Kaitlin Brey}

One Piece by Lucas Schultz

My Battle

Blood sweat and tears
describe my past three years.
Battling through adversity
brought forward by distinguished foes
Going from deer in the headlights as a freshman
to the growing pains as a sophmore
now as a junior I'm fully prepared
for the rigors of a tumultuous FVA season.
Settling for an early exit the past three years
going for gold in Green Bay this year.
Plowing through harsh criticism
spending all summer in the humid gym
sweat dripping off my exasperated body
removing past seasons tears after an agonizing defeat
muscles screaming pain from a harsh workout.
Always looking towards the upcoming season
with a winning mentality in mind.
Doing whatever it takes to get the job done.
Motivated from the agony of past defeats
to come out on top this seaon.

{Poem by Lucas Schultz}

One Natural Piece by Deanna Rusek

Ode to the Forest

Needles lie
abundantly sprayed
among broken branches,
creating
incidental homes
for the creatures
who
rely on nature to build;
holes in fallen trunks
become
sanctuaries to some,
rightful inhabitants
made vagabonds through
man’s desires;
brown, red, gold and wet decay
blanket the ever-damp
floor—not seen naked
in years—holding
moisture which rises
on hot, sultry days
creating life; it gives
and gives, never takes,
only humans take.
Bigger still—the
creatures that are
hunted, who live among
the small and trivial
others that crawl
and bury themselves
inside, within and throughout.
Promote and preserve,
this life bearing,
life breathing,
ever-giving but
not ever-living thing
lest the Ever-green king
be overthrown.
Who will share
in the blame
when this
ephemeral gift,
misused, ceases
to exist?

{Poem by Deanna Rusek}

A Bit of Beauty by Michael Ceraolo

Dream Weaver

For those unable to dream,
dreams were now available for purchase,
running the gamut of formats
in a wide range of prices

{Poem by Michael Ceraolo}

A Poem by Jackson Culpepper

In the Truck, in the Sky

It was not cold, must
have been spring. Leaving the fire,
we climbed into the back of the truck.
We watched the full moon,
the stars spinning through their hours,
the thin clouds sliding across
the sky, translucent. We talked,
teenage longings for girls, for what
we thought might be love. We spoke
to the stars as Orion rose heavy in the east.
As Delphinus, in a tiny patch, swirled around
the cosmic center. We may never talk
in such a way again. Still, today,
our hopes rise on certain pinlit nights,
and are pulled away by the spinning stars,
like those hopes we spoke without understanding
why we wished for them.
Scorpio's claws catch them
as he rises, or they draw to Sirius
as moths to a flame.

{Poem by Jackson Culpepper}

Same Hands by Derrick Harrison Hurd

Same Hands

Mist stealing away the skyline
shadows of wind-blown leaves
The sun a father and the father a sun
Clever gusts of capes and scarves
hair made breathless and alive
by the hands of destinys sculptors
In whose same hands
are tomorrows
best hope

{Poem by Derrick Harrison Hurd}

One Piece by Bradley W. Buchanan

Excerpted from Feeding the Birds

Birds come, disappear. The worlds we set
Within our own, to appease the stars
We have shut out from our skies, must thrive
As must all things unlike and beyond ourselves.
We feed our loss to the creatures we love:
Stale bread crumbs, scattered on waters, dissolve.

{Poem by Bradley W. Buchanan}

Two Pieces by Amy Hrynchuk

Ocean Of Love

I started my life out swimming in the ocean of love.

In my early years I was lead through the waters
and taught about the different depths of the ocean.
As I grew older I began to swim on my own
and even lead others through the waters as I had been.
I swam as deep as I could for as I could.

After swimming for many years, I began to tire
and made my way to the edge of the ocean.
As I sat along the beach for a year, the questions
brought by the dry land behind me grabbed a hold.
As I began to wonder, I turned my back on the ocean.
On the love I knew and could always count on.

As the years slowly moved forwards,
I moved backwards and further onto the dry land.
The further that I walked, the more lost and confused
I would become with little help from others around me.
Not only had I become lost on the dry land
but I had lost myself in the venture..

Several years had passed me by and I had lost
all directions back to the ocean of love.
I had began to dehydrate on the dry land
and longed to swim in the depths of the ocean again.
I was slowly lead back to the ocean and helped
back into it’s loving and familiar waters.

I am once again home, swimming in the ocean of love.


The Beauty Within

Sitting on the edge of the shore,
the cool lake water laps over her feet.
As the water slowly creeps over her feet,
she pays no attention to the coolness.
Her attention does not go out
to the boaters or skiers on the lake..
Instead it goes out in the other direction.

Through the loud roar of the motors,
the quiet chirping of birds
overwhelm her thoughts.
As she watches the two birds
frolicking in the tree tops above her,
she begins to think about the world around.

Of all the commotion we cause
and with all the destruction that has followed,
the world has changed for the worse.
We have learned to adapt to everything
that we have done to the once
beautiful land that we took over.

Through all the commotion and destruction,
somehow the world’s beauty has remained.
The only way to actually view this beauty,
you have to distance yourself.
Distance yourself from the
manmade destruction that is
taking the beauty away from this world.

{Poetry by Amy Hrynchuk}

Two Poems by Anselm Brocki

Two

Ever since beginning
I have been enchanted
by two worlds—
the one beyond my fingers
and the other within me.
When gaudy sun rises,
it rises in me too,
and when people smile,
they smile inside me.


More Palatable

Although in agreement
with their peaceful ways
of living and high ideals,
a cautious part of my
mind is reluctant to join
the mystics of Buddhism,
early Christianity, & Islam
in their quest for a kind
of nirvana in union with
some divine, which might
last forever only in their
heads, and instead of doing
so argues for a more open,
realistic approach to living
through the promising
explorations of neuroscience
and evolutionary psychology
on how my brain makes
loving sense out of sunlight
on green leaves, appreciates
the exquisite sensual bodies
of all mammals, and delights
at the tang of Concord grapes
crushed against my palate.

{Poetry by Anselm Brocki}

One Poetry Review by Peter Lattu

Reviewing Mary Oliver’s Red Bird

It’s winter here, cold with a biting wind chilling the skin. Snow showers are forecast. Mary Oliver’s new book Red Bird warms the spirit in such cold weather:

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Her dogs are back, Luke and Percy. Luke displays a wild, loving approach to life that Mary Oliver desires as well. Like Luke, Percy wants us to “Love, love, love”. Percy wants Mary Oliver to put down her books and go out with him to enjoy the natural world. In another poem, Percy shows her how to run forward into life.

Blackwater Pond makes an appearance in “Mornings at Blackwater”. Here, Mary Oliver revels in the discoveries that her morning walks bring her. They are a source of inspiration for her. She advises us to: “come to the pond… of your imagination… And live/your life.”

Even with Mary Oliver’s mostly upbeat look at life through nature, there is a downside, as in “Red”. It is a very sad poem about roadkill, Virginia gray fox roadkill. A mating pair of gray foxes were killed on the highway “while the cars kept coming”.

Mary Oliver touches deftly on some current political topics. She highlights global warming in a poem about polar bears. She bemoans the death of youth in war in “Iraq”. In “Of The Empire”, she concludes that our nation has a heart that is “small, and hard, and full of meanness”.

Still, Mary Oliver exhorts us to:

Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it

Pick up Red Bird and warm your soul.

{Review by Peter Lattu}

One Piece by Julien Edmund Moss

Hanging Garden Flower

Ah! he is not a common man
Who turns to a flowerless tree.
-Onitsura

Many leaves reside within her garden
Many leaves, indeed; many
Across the breeze the gray river
Golden Bridge, and lady’s laughing fancies
Many leaves, many slender: many
All possessed a smothered envy

Sweet but for the flower…
With its boisterous oranges, yellows, and indigos
The blossom standing neatly in the sun
Who would blame the keeper for a peak while on a run
A cricket lands gently upon his fishing line
Now, the blue moon watches soundly

Snow white-capped mountains shift restlessly behind
Their glimpse will come surely
The willows sing what the wind ordains
While the pond’s low notes support in harmony
Her fringes sway askance within the wind
A late afternoon nap tucked between the folds

The blue plums taste so good this evening
The color of your eyes tantalize- I am mesmerized!
What if the moon saw your face?
Knowing distance wide your beautiful name
The swirling eddies only enhance the aura at once
And once again once I saw you again once

Apricot boughs and ferns seem as nothing
The now-cloudy skies are ever wanting
I could sit here and think and want the more
I that was once so dandy and sprightly
Lie jealous of the folds and forays
Of the lady’s Hanging Garden Flower

{Poem by Julien Edmund Moss}