Susan Marie Davniero

My Mother's Songs

My Mother’s songs
Her music belongs
The lyrics known
For her to own

Writing the verses
As songs emerges
Hear, so shall be
My Mother’s melody

As we listen to
Her musical menu
Forever long
My Mother’s songs


Easter's Lily

Easter had seen
Burst of green
In garden’s room
White lily blooms

Pure as white
Point of light
To grace the way
This Easter Day

Awakens spring
Hear Angels sing
Each Easter gives
Behold, God lives

{Poem by Susan Marie Davniero}

Holly Day

The Footsteps Overhead

at night
the thud of the dishwasher upstairs
sounds like voices. I crank
the baby monitor
way up, listen for monsters
in my daughter's room.

sometimes
I hear something on the back porch
behind my head
can almost see
the deranged face pressed up against the glass
hands ready to smash through
I won't turn around.

if I just pretend
everything's all right
it will be.
If I cover my ears
and close my eyes
it'll be all right.

{Poem by Holly Day}

Marlene Ann Soifer

War

All of us have a gift, why waste yourself
on jealousy, jealousy breeds insanity:
All the young grab for love:
Love everyone, every human being:
"They know right from wrong"; "they know fear";
"they know doubt", so why waste a minute
"love now". Young. "Love now", why fight.

You fight for your right not to be walked over and take
what belongs to you:

"Wars", start that way "don't they": hate is insanity:
don't you see: so the young, don't wait.


Slavery

Aren't we all slaves to some extent? Working on missions within:
Don't we all feel compelled to stay steadfast to something we hold a necessary task? No matter which way you turn: we are all slaves to ourselves for reasons beyond compare:

{Poetry by Marlene Ann Soifer}

Joy Olree

Where I Am Called

To go where I am called,
for where can mans time
best be spent except in
the presence of God.


Pictures of my World

Took a picture of a book
to read its’ words when
I am gone.

Took a picture of a brook
to feel its’ wet when I am
dry.

Took a picture of the wind
to feel its’ air when I can't
breathe.

Took a picture of the earth
to see my home when I am
lost.

Took a picture of the sky
to remember where my
parents are.

Took a picture of myself
so I would know who I am.

Took a picture of my camera
so when it breaks I'll have
its’ memories.

{Poetry by Joy Olree}

Susan Marie Davniero

Snowflakes Place

Winter’s gift
Floating adrift
Snowflakes flight
No two alike

Winter time
Supreme design
Clouds snowflakes fall
If flakes come at all

Winter’s beauty
Crystal symmetry
Snowflakes around
Kissing the ground

Winter’s fall from grace
Pardon snowflakes place
An ice beauty before
Melts into nothing more

{Poem by Susan Marie Davniero}

Peter Lattu

The Wild Braid: A Review

The Wild Braid by Stanley Kunitz with Genine Lentine reflects on poetry and gardening. The book arose from a series of conversations between Kunitz and Lentine between 2002 and 2004. Musing on gardening and poetry, Kunitz looked back on a century of doing both:

… the garden is a metaphor for the poems you write in a lifetime and give to the world in the hope that these poems you have lived through will be equivalent to the flower that takes root in the soil and becomes a part of the landscape. If you’re lucky, that happens with some of the poems you create, while others pass the way of so many plants you let into the garden, or grow from seed: they emerge and give pleasure for a season and then vanish.

The dozen poems included in The Wild Braid have taken root in our literary landscape.

Kunitz explains that writing poetry taps into the unconscious, “the wilderness” of which he said “its beasts are not within our control”. Other writers have seen creativity as like a beast emerging from the wilderness. The poet Gary Snyder wrote that his poems came from things lurking in the darkness at the edge of his campfire. The writer Stephen King said that his stories came from creatures in the shadows at the edge of his garden. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in “Inversnaid”: “Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.” Kunitz says of Hopkins: “… that’s exactly what he was saying. When people say they are moved by a poem they are saying they have been in touch with the untouchable.” Out of this wilderness of the unconscious come poems and they “seem to have no maker at all”.

While poems may come from the wilderness of the mind, Kunitz finds a lot of similarity between poems and gardens. Stanzas are like terraces, “letting our mind rest before moving on”. Revisiting a garden or a poem leads to new perspectives with different colorations. To Kunitz, a poem has a sense of secrecy like a flower about to unfold: “So much of the power of a poem is in what it doesn’t say as much as in what it does say.” He finds that poems are “muddied by too much explanation, too much exposure.”

For all the similarities, Kunitz enumerates ways a new poem differs from a garden:

Thinking of a new season in the garden feels different from imagining a new poem. The garden has achieved its form, it doesn’t have to be new each year. What it has to do is grow. You’re not going to uproot the entire garden and start all over. The poem is always a new creation and aspires to a transcendence that is beyond telling at the moment when you’re working on it. You know that you are moving into an area you’ve never explored before and there is the great difference.

Poems live in a wilderness beyond the garden.

The Wild Braid is an enchanting book: beautiful photographs, fine poems, and lucid conversations. Stanley Kunitz and Genine Lentine distill Kunitz’s century of gardening and writing into a short book full of insight into both.

{Essay by Peter Lattu}

Patrick T. Randolph

motherhood

Robin’s beak—
Fat earthworm,
Euphoric chirps!


secrets

Childhood voice
peeks out from
Memory’s eyes.


a study in linguistics

Winter stars
are Night’s verbs
in Sky language.

{Breath Poems by Patrick T. Randolph}

Kalifornia

Evil Ways

When I first met you I was obsessed
Your face, your body and the way that you dressed
You smiled and laughed and gave me stolen candy
You take what you want and use who is handy
A wink and a smile in your catholic school dress
You take their existence and accept nothing less
A boy or a girl whichever you choose
They fall prey to your beauty and that’s when they lose
Their mind, their soul nothing is wasted
I love your stolen candy it’s the best I’ve ever tasted

{Poem by Kalifornia}

Ray Gallucci

Water Drop

In icy cold of empty space,
It hitched a ride on comet's face,
Accelerating toward a star
Of recent birth, from distance far.

As sun of color yellow grew
In field of vision, met with two
Enormous spheres of frigid gas
That slightly altered comet's path.

Whereas before would swing around
The virgin star, now comet found
What was a clear path forward blocked
By cooling sphere of molten rock.

The impact spewed infernal heat
That vaporized it so completely.
But despite this extra speed,
From planet's pull could not be freed.

And so became a resident
Of cooling planet permanent.
With other zillions of its kind
Condensed into a watery rind.

Our planet's oceans may be older
Than whatever magma smolders
From beneath the ancient crust
Recycling iron back to rust.

I find myself in Ocean City
Strolling through the wavelets pretty,
Knowing that the ancient surf's
Touched every shore since planet's birth.

Expanding to enormous size,
Our dying sun will oceans fry,
Returning vapors where they came
In search of where new stars may flame.

{Poem by Ray Gallucci}

Stephanie Kaylor

Under an Old Apple Tree

In the field next to the orchard
a black stallion grazed upon the
lanky blades of grass while a white
mare tread softly around in circles
until he met her eye.

I turned my head and smiled,
resting against the gnarled
tree trunk while my daughter
floated along with the bees
through the golden light, filling
her basket as she picked an apple
from every tree,

fears I once had about my skin
seeing too much of the sun
evaporating into the pungent air
of life turned ripe, now seeing
that beauty is not something
you drape upon a powdered body,

but a feeling you can watch
under an old apple tree.

{Poem by Stephanie Kaylor}

John Grey

Cure-All

Another letter from you,
full of medical advice.
You write to my ailments,
not to me.
I’m beginning to think
it’s my headaches you miss,
the allergies, the cough.
You lived with them, not with me.
Your companion was the throb
behind my forehead,
the sneezing fits,
the cigarette hack of one
who never smoked.
I’m sure you only pretend
to want them cured
with your new—age remedies,
your lists of pharmaceutical web sites.
If I got better,
you’d be killing your own memories.
A clean bill of health for me
is five years stolen from your life.
You end your letter with the usual
“Love you.”
That’ s another cure that you
don’t really wish for me.

{Poem by John Grey}

A. J. Chilson

In Memoriam, for “Dandy Don” Meredith, 1938-2010

He used to sing “Turn out the lights, the party’s over,”
when the Monday night game neared its conclusion,
and it was time for all of us to head off to bed,
knowing we would get to hear that song once again.

The voice, though, has since become silent,
now drained in the memory of those who heard him.
The man known as “Dandy Don” has drifted off
into the sunset, where football stories continue
to be shared as though it had happened yesterday.

{Poem by A.J. Chilson}

Peter Lattu

the tree

gaily adorned
lights winking bright
amidst the black
midwinter night
until
stripped bare
and looking
forlorn
its passage
marks
a season gone
as time
passes on

{Poem by Peter Lattu}

Nathan Nobbe

Changing Beds

Being happy is a scary thought.
It means leaving behind an old friend,
An old friend named unhappiness.
We have shared so much time with him,
Have always found a sense of security
In the familiarity of his embrace.
To step out with happiness,
We have only allowed this at short intervals
Before feeling like an unfaithful lover
And running back to the comfort of his bed.
To wake up happy?
Oh my, this would be a bit like standing
At the edge of a cliff.
At the edge of a cliff with no confidence
In a sense of balance to be able
To remain there.
Ah yes, to remain wrapped in the snug
Blankets in the dark bed of unhappiness.
Much easier to do.
But why then complain of the plight,
To blame unhappiness for the comfort we feel.
We have chosen again his company through fear.
Goodbye we must say. Goodbye we must say.
And never, never look back.

{Poem by Nathan Nobbe}

Eliot Tracz

Picking Up The Pieces

We are left to wonder “Why?”
What could I have said, or
What could I have done?

How do we pick up the pieces
And try to make a whole, when
Everything that’s lost, was everything we had?

How a neighbors voice in the hall
During another sleepless night, is not
You coming home or calling to say “Hello.”

These questions have no answers,
The walls stare back in silence, and I am left alone-
To begin picking up the pieces.

{Poem by Eliot Tracz}

Anne Malin Ringwalt

Wanderer's Ghazal

Deface the meaning of your hands
lie lost in the sand, dig with someone else's hands.

Don't pity lost meaning when nothing tangible relates
my words plead you to rename your fate's hands.

Lost in Florence or Nice; a European coastline
find the architecture of stone, crumble in your hands.

In Moscow I sit on a broken chair
strung to the ceiling, I use the spindle, sew a quilt on your hands.

For Anne is said to be graceful and Malin clever
your farce disposition is not the meaning of your hands.

{Poem by Anne Malin Ringwalt}

Susan Marie Davniero

No Greater Wealth

There is no greater wealth found
Than in the silence peaceful sound
When taking your own life’s path
Absent of false worship on behalf
Of wealth, materialism and greed
There can be no lesser creed
Seek to measure real life’s worth
By way of peace and love on earth
Aim to live a life to share
Giving your love, help and care
Help a neighbor and volunteer
Needy people are always near
Extend a helping hand
Make it your life’s plan
In the end it will make sense
Life is more than dollars and sense

{Poem by Susan Marie Davniero}

Leatha Carter Virostko

Under the Agate Moon

I met a shadow-man on the road
under the agate moon

he slipped through my fingers
like a watery make-of-mind
following my every move

though sleep should have reigned
at this hour
we were alert as owls

a ribbon of tar stretched out to the east
the direction in which we were headed
though I seemed more anxious than
the reluctant shadow-man

a lonely car drove past
moving slowly
then stopping
with steam billowing

I thought we had become fellows
if not friends but
as the beetle ingested me
I found myself alone

looking through the rearview window
the shadow-man disappeared
into the night

while my new friend the driver said
"onward and upward"
we drove away into the night
under the agate moon

{Poem by Leatha Carter Virostko}

Sonja Kosler

Feet

My feet feel weathered boards
as I walk to the end of the dock
where I will sit under the perfect half moon.

My legs sway in lazy arcs
while toes blend lunar light
adrift in the drowsy midnight lake.

Secure in this liquid world
I watch as a solitary loon
dips and dives into the water.

I wonder about this loon.
How does she occupy her time?
Does she have a plan?
Is her life closer to the beginning or the end?

I lift callused feet from the water
observe the drips as minutes from a clock
ticking toward the tomorrow
I see arriving ever too soon.

{Poetry by Sonja Kosler)

Roger Cowin

Fall

A cadre of crows plot against the scarecrow
keeping his faithful vigil over the farmer’s field.
He only moves when the wind blows.
Today the air is still.

The crisp, golden days of autumn
erupt into a pageant of splendid color.

Trees don their gaudiest clothes,
and bright yellow school busses reappear,
even the cerulean sky is streaked
with hints of violet, amber and orange.
Umber cornfields stretch out forever,
awaiting the harvest.


Winter

Winter descends quickly
and overstays its welcome
casting its icy net
over the desolate earth,
a beautiful and deadly web.

By February, the nomad in us
longs for the tropical climes
of the deep south.
We breathe the agitated air,
grow restless and sad.

{Poems by Roger Cowin}

Peter Lattu

divorce

snow falling
in Crystal City
harsh highrise
covered
in cold snow
she said
divorce
he froze
in the winter night
all warmth
crushed
in the cold

{Poem by Peter Lattu}

Gregory Liffick

Amen

The elder
of the
inner city
church
prays on
his knees,
still numb
from years
of manual
labor.
The ache
in his
bones
adds
weight
to his pleas.
He raises
a finger
like David
on the
Sistine
ceiling,
hoping
to dial
the Almighty's
number.

{Poem by Gregory Liffick}

Amye Nicole Bird

Love's Long Hours

If the love of my life has all been for naught
And all of myself I've just given in vein,
If I've truely not been my lovers one love,
Then all I've done is tossed about
In an endless, desperate fight,
Through an ever darkened, blinded plight.

For we've blown through weathered, blackend skies,
Fought the rivers rapid, turbulent cries,
We've seen the days of anguished, frightened eyes,
And still we melt in the embers of fires empassioned might.
Years of empty, years of plenty,
Years of giving all and all the more.

If loves long hours have all been for naught
And all of this heart I've just given in vein,
If I've not truely felt my lovers true love,
Then this very life has been lived out in doubt,
Unknowing, unlearning and having no clue
Of what true love is all about.

{Poem by Amye Nicole Bird}

Matt Catania

Follow Me Down the Well

Follow it down the topple well
wish the haze away
eyes are dreary, liquid, unclearly
a human fog
dim lights dismay.

Eyes grow dreary, deep, dark
dim lights dismay
Eye can see in the dark
clear precise, sharp
is the way

Eye can see in the dark
only one way
is the way
only one way
is my way

Only one thing can be said
Eye can see it
I can’t say it
I don’t know how.

{Poem by Matt Catania}