Few days, and I'll be twenty four …
In my life's calendar, they are twenty four after the fifty…

I got tired more than any time before…
Years of pain and sadness have been passed, just like a tour…

Six of them were passed fighting my fears…
Spending the remaining, a little by little, sinking in my tears…

She has been dead, leaving me alone…
But I still feel her smile, her cry, her laugh tone…
I miss her, I long to be beside her so soon…

I'm coming, year by year; it's just a game of days…
And on each December, I'll sing with blue jays…
The song of the saddest birthdays...

Sweep away, sweep away the crumbs from this feasting!
But shouldn't we gather the crumbs and feast again tomorrow?

For days on end I walked down road after road; 
the crumbs I dropped to mark my way, eaten by robins.

Sitting at dinner, only fragments of her talk do I catch; 
my fork pushes crumbs around my plate, my mind looking for patterns.

The loneliness of this big old house and the loneliness of that busy shopping mall;
"Which gnaws the heart more?" I ask the toaster crumbs of breakfasts past.

Checking the recipe yet again for the tuna noodle casserole,
I reduce dried, hard bread to a pile of crumbs with the rolling pin.

Walking along the bank of the muddy river, rain threatening to fall;
there, scattered amongst the pebbles, the crumbs left by the geese.

Akikaze puts another log on the fire and pulls the comforter about him; the tea cup is drained and the cookies are gone, crumbs remain.

No more, no more forever, MacCrimmon
will return, MacLeod's piper MacCrimmon.

A fateful moon rises over the " /Isle of Skye -
he writes his last tune, Farewell to MacCrimmon.

Boats knock together as they set out upon the water.
Pipes on the ramparts blare and fade for MacCrimmon.

Not for silver or gold will he march home.
Not in wartime or peace will come again MacCrimmon.

Ruth, can you hear his red-haired sister lamenting?
Who would remember the Rout of Moy, were it not for MacCrimmon?

A simple gaze beneath the veil instructed me - what must be done.
An invitation, such as this one, should not be taken lightly.

Leaving chapbooks in the pews to get another word out.
Ruffled feathers and the squawking of intolerance ensue.

There’s no stained glass to tint the harsh light of these days.
Survival is a lonesome search for the pathway to tomorrow.

The darkness of a deep well can mean many different things.
Is it a wellspring of truth or a reservoir of continued sorrow?

If a spoke of light should land nearby, we’ll take it as a sign.
The sound of hopeful notes would be welcome and sustaining.

Keep the surface of the notes round and cool and dry.
Always heat the rhythm to a rolling boil and hold it there.

The glass hive filled his rear view mirror, as he broke through to an
open space, where he could breath and see the horizon.

They were saddened by the news of another lover’s leap, and watched
reflections of a gull sweep across a somber sea.

The shimmering embers of a dying star grow faint as dawn arrives.
A million years ago, one final stellar breath fades into the night.

She watched the world with eyes that matched the sky at noon.
Was the tattoo of a butterfly just a modern poet’s dream?

this isn’t much; a windy day such
as clear ice under a wobbly crutch

seeing these tulips beside the cast
in the flat landscape of the Dutch

plates and pitchers inspired by blue
and white on the unpainted hutch

distant as a memory’s cold steel
the potter’s wheel that knows my touch

if there was a raging forest fire
as I ran what would I clutch?

a few words in three lines at best
you know, haikujane, it isn’t much

Two days after Christmas, I am sitting at my desk listening to "Ave Maria" by Joaquin des Prez. The slowly undulating lines of music, intertwining to create harmony out of polyphony, present a sound somewhat alien to the 21st century ear so thoroughly steeped in the 18th century harmonics of Bach and Handel, Mozart and Beethoven; yet, on this quiet night when the fading remnants of "peace on earth, goodwill towards men" still linger, the strange harmonics of another world, when belief was the Alpha and Omega of society, flood me with a feeling of peace, instill a sense of tranquility.

the crèche
decorating the mantle
where's the baby Jesus

The afternoon of a South Georgia summer day finds its zenith at around six o’clock when the heat is beginning to wane and sunlight spills with abundance through leaves and down the spines of grasses.

The surrounding woods are stitched together by miles of dirt roads called ‘fire-breaks’ used mostly by their owners to access their interiors (and for trespassers like me). They’re also frequented by striking yellow-legged orb-weaving spiders whose long prisms of leaders you must duck under to miss.

Following the power lines part way, new roads open to the east; the dog seems to agree with the one I’ve chosen to explore. Before long we find an old field—what did they grow here, and how long ago? Directly across begins a trail, more a footpath than a road.

For a few moments we simply stand in front of it— something lurks there: a feeling is poised on the edge of the nerves, vague but every bit as real as a blush. Captivated as if we were about to pass through the Ishtar Gates, we take our first steps into the cool shade within. The quiet is all-pervasive but punctured by a subtle barb of expectancy, as if the forest were holding its breath. Lined with red needles, the path is luxuriantly soft with footsteps being muffled to little more than slipper-sounds. Still black waters release a stagnant tang before its faintly trickling runoff can be heard. The dog goes straight for it, dropping his head through a ball of gnats to drink.

While I wait for him to finish, I listen as his tongue shatters the water’s surface. Evening sunlight streams with a white blinding intensity over the leaves of trees that mark the end of the path, one of the most beautiful sights a forest glade can convey and possible only at this hour.

While he continues to drink, goose bumps begin to erupt over my arms and I have the odd impression that I’m actually within an enclosure of some kind, with a brook for a kitchen, a living-room of pines and spikes of palmetto, carpets of dry, fragrant leaves: a place at once separate but not—I entertain the absurd idea that I’ve stumbled into the house of a woodland god. After all, I reason, is this any more irrational than one’s belief in a Christian god at Sunday worship?

With that same unmistakable certainty you have when someone has just left the room you’re about to enter, there’s a strong ripple of recent presence. I search about for a sign despite one half of my brain scolding the other.

In this strange moment of suspension, Hesiod and Ovid are beginning to make sense and they launch a smell of those mythic worlds marooned just across the ether of my rationality, the sacred hectares of Claude Lorraine, the lonely crumbling twilights of Caspar David Friedrich, the flesh and bone souls of Etruscans. It was all here, in this patch of woods and picking its way amid the cracks in my so-called rational mind...but with all the internal debating, the feeling begins to slither away. With the dog peering obliviously up at me, I decide we’ve trespassed long enough, though in truth I wanted to leave the fruit and take the seed to plant another day.

As we leave the shaded path and reach the field again, I look back at what I’d imagined earlier as a kind of gate, more to chide myself for being tricked so easily by a simple stand of trees and a poor imagination, but it feels just as it did at the start, and I wondered at what hour and from what embrace the woodland god would be returning.

across the god’s threshold
traipsing in old sneakers
a mortal’s gaunt shadow

From a work in progress – Blue Are The Life-Giving Waters

The first night I get to know my future-wife, I ask about her fiancée, whom I’ve heard about from others. She looks down at the carpet. "He’s really into his work these days." For a moment, we’re both quiet.

on and off
behind the venetian blind
a firefly

Nomadic pesticides equate to boundaries unless a fickle avenue tenses half to blue. The several overt migration theories tend to wax. Why am I telling you? Eternity costs the same as fiberglass if you purchase sweeping canopies. Cacophony de-veins the silk rubbed to osmosis. I half conceive dormant vicissitudes. Are you among my briars thatched? I guess it is worm worn to be holding tanks. Eventually stars will splinter into crispy light. At which point homogeneous throwbacks may take flight.

Coffers filled, exhilarating premises, once your home

When able wheels are not (mis)placed beneath me I distinguish surface from the resonance of stones. No room for pebbles on the page. I think to you, with certainty of prayer. Pressed duck, rucksack, beyond-the-limit-searing scratch. The lack of flurry draws forth synonyms or homophones or objects that occur on either side of equal sign. This painting will amount to broth unless you frame it. And walls that once seemed gray recall that time occurs at once.

Shoulder to should, anachronism if mismatch there be

My mother's mother was named Willie Mae. All her grandchildren knew her as Mimi. I have dim memories of her trying to walk on crutches.But mostly I remember her in a wheelchair. Her arms and legs bent. Her hands and fingers gnarled. No touch more gentle and loving. She lived with us off and on throughout my childhood. Her love was the sweetest kind -- unconditional.

foggy morning
wafting from the church
amazing grace

I ride the train to work. My fellow passengers tend to be nondescript.
People-watching affords little amusement. So, I read.
Today I leave my seat early and stand by the door to await my stop.

low-cut dress
can't keep my eyes off
her reflection

postie
she hands me a parcel
tied with gold string

I open the gift. A book: blue cloth bordered in scarlet and green smelling of India. A tree-within-flame logo is stamped in gold on the cover. The thin pages are filled with poems in Bengalese calligraphy.
I leaf through them not able to understand the words and a sound like rain or a light breeze riffles the pages, while I discover, as if by accident: uproar, silence, shouts, smells, poppies, dandelion clocks, scent of evening in an exotic place – the cosmic mandala.

solitude –
plum blossoms
on the summer sky

summer storm
beneath the nikau palms
a dry spot

pocketful of shells
each has a story
an undertow

behind the tower,
the morning's white –
already, it is August

the siren wakes early;
for one moment,
on the steel bars,
dew

viewing dawn,
the Master's poorest student
should be fortunate

half-blinded with sweat
and remembering old words;
geese over the ricefields

the heron stirs;
mist unfolds
along the shoulder of Taishan

black shadow, sharpening –
the soldier asked
Are you a poet?

in the death cells
an orange box
is a good table

the paper moves;
wind
from the orange trees of Italy

walking in the grove,
the disciple who stumbles
tries to go unnoticed

blossom falls;
the dirt floor
deep in pages

one after another
the swallows
leave the tower

ENTER JULIA ALOFT
after a speech of Romeo's, William Shakespeare
Christopher Barnes

I'm love-groggy, green,
Pockmarks of mother wit, unpussed angst.

Blue-ointment lantern light
In Julia's functional arch.
It is the whishing-bone, she a sunflower.

Crane that head, scent the Gothic moon, White mountains peaky.

Your sulphur-headed sparks
Char moon to sun.
Fuss, coo it off. Love.

The drowned Code-Breaker's disk
is a solemn plot
to agents of influence,
negative vetting.
Unutterable is his varnished arias.

Will flower-of-age teens
swell lungs for daddy?
Daisy squirms up FM atmospherics,
feeling down a peg
at the tent's ropes.

She pods him like bloated dough
in a grave-green groundsheet –
a parody of Jocelyn the cook.
Sugar-candy quickscents, mouth-watering, tumble from the pit of her gut.

Remember our first dance
in Spring moonlight beneath the stars?
We quarreled one summer day –
a broken tea cup on the floor.
The first leaf fell in autumn –
you are gone – will you return?

Each winter night I watch
white snow fall on frozen ground.
No one knocks on my old door –
I listen day and night for you.
This Spring I’ll dance in the dark,
my shadow, my only comfort.

We travel highway ribbons
singing the songs from our time.
Tomorrow, you fly away
to your homes far across the sea.
At dinner, we raise our glasses
to memories we share.

We’ll meet again in a place
on distant shores in a strange land.
In that land we’ll see new sights –
in wonderment we’ll sing songs.
Recall the nights we watched the moon
cross the skies fading at dawn.

Neither sea nor distant roads
fade memories of sunny days.
When your hair turns white like Queen Ann’s Lace
think of me, an old, absent man.
Then raise your glass, smile again
and say "for auld lang syne!".

thunderstorms
all night long one dog
under our bed
the other’s ears restless
in my dangling hand

leaping
from the wet jetty
at dawn
my Labrador smashes
a flat plate of gray lake

Konni races
to fetch her ball again
and again
I don’t know what I want
until I don’t get it

pet hospital –
a woman and her son
both weeping
walk out of the surgery,
empty collar between them

together
along the low-tide beach
footprints pawprints –
first hard lesson I learned,
the lifespan of a dog

 

Good Friday
pellucid green lagoon
tiny fish
slipping between my toes,
distant chant of the surf

meditation
on a white lily
each petal
perfect for this church
on Easter Sunday

"let us pray
the longings of our hearts" –
ah, those longings
no less, just different
in my sixty-fifth year

now her sermon –
ambulance sirens go
screaming past,
the rector pauses
our candles gutter

brass censer swings
incense into sunlight
beaming through
stained glass beside the Cross:
"Christ is Risen"

first day of summer –
waking
without a plan

sun's warmth
on the back of my neck –
the raven's croak

San Gregorio –
we hop out
for a flea market

music festival –
a hundred bikers
drown the quartet

Seal Cove –
some of them
streaked with blood

eye to eye
with the pelicans –
dip of the wave

ocean sunset –
a solitary man
on his phone

the green flash –
will we see it
this time?

woods to pond
the spotted fawn
undaunted

wildflower meadow
a fawn
leaps its shadow

autumn orchard
young deer
nibbling windfalls

light snow
deer tracks
in my morning path

Since I was young, I've been the youngest
and worshipped Venus in the sacred
and fragrant colonnades of even
her humblest serving maids.

Some of the time I've managed to
ignore the silly rules, and valued
a graceful poem higher than
a contract of employment.

And thus I've spent my life surrounded
by books and children. Now my grandson
advises me to act my age.
Outrageous innocence!

Poor stranger, I've been younger than you
for longer than you would remember.
I've celebrated life so long
I am too old to change.

a fresh leaf
white in the winter
of a new year;
it seems a shame
to mar it with words

Donald Keene
shares my cup of tea
this new morning
we talk about the death
of tyrants and of poetry

raw and painful
this old blister;
if only our hurts
would change with
the calendar

this journal,
bound in black,
a suitable coffin
for all the words
I have written

cold it is,
and colder still,
this dawn in
a new year
in an old house

in a few hours
I must face the sun—
without the grace
of age or humor,
but only memory

do they wake
to new hope
or old despair,
so many poor people
in this spinning world?

on this new day,
the iron cricket
doesn’t sing

This is the season
of life that
saturates my mind,
every sense,
a work in progress.

Rhythms creep
across mind membranes,
effortlessly drift,
carve an existence that gives
my project substance.

Reality frolics to waltz
with the wind
and surges to meet
a new morning,
then soars in the air
and burns with fire.

I follow my imagination,
it is the stuff of dreams
and realization is empowerment.

needs choke
on feelings under rice paper skin,
cellulite gathers like bee stings
on lumpy legs,
once long and slim.

Hands knot like dried apples,
belong to another, with veins
raised like distended road maps,
blue with angleworms.
Days, steal my time.

Now complete, I live again
with thoughts for myself,
past journeys belonged to others,
constant care for them, gone.
I was always last in line.

The circle of life sweeps
back to childhood in many ways.
I want more for the invisible me,
crave substantially...
as a child requires selfishly.

So...do not agree with me,
just understand my needs,
they must be the same for you;
some semblance of self.
Your silence spurs me on.

The white silence of winter
swept the innocent vastness,
bloated clouds hung, sliced
the heavens with their hoard.

Bitter cold slipped
between layers of clothing,
stole precious warmth
as snow settled like
a powdered wig on my head.

Wind spit snow in my lashes
and rime glazed my boots
with slush, half frozen into ice.
Toes curled to hold the heat
but frost won the battle.

The white silence of winter
swept the innocent vastness
and I longed for a roaring fire
and a steaming cup of chocolate.

RIVER BEND
Linda Papanicolau

star trails
the bear turns over
in her sleep

again I dream
I’m in my childhood home

Independence Day
we sign with sparklers
on the night

the neighbor’s beagle baying
at a moonless sky

nicotiana
a large moth on the inside
of the screen
as my lantern dims
foxfire

The night with no address  in her silk gown flex  it brushes the glass bowl

a deep sea dream             calling motion unidentified            in disposition

names become shifted
locations metastasized

on piano keys              one finger moves on to c                          b holds

only half a step lower
black space heard in a pause

like a heron             in no action upstream                     dozing a raftsman

spilling some gin some spasm
Midsummer over willows

pebbles in my sponge   like tears on an albatross I greet the fetal shoreline

as if there will be learning
on the longitude of sailors

the light house keeper        his goal seems about fixtures         and wattage

he dares to touch the switch
at this early hour

perhaps tea              he thinks green innocent                     this sweetness

since the port looks oily
it’s for the behavioral science

this loose laughter             feather-light vibrations                on April Fool

from a far country side
the donkey I hear

stage-time rehearsal    warriors hanging around     their theological warfare

when a plastic horse opens
out jumps the clown

tightly shut             like a white fur in winter           his airmail letter arrives

the postman waves
but why is everything floating

on our bikers’ course  with the seventh gear up hill   we’re loosing weight

on a cliff inward
outward only curves

to a Marina in the pool        a dolphin is balancing            the only ball left

couldn’t we also let dance
ourselves on noses

trout fishing
on a calm autumn day
brings no catch
just the feeling
that it makes you happy

putting your gloves
on my frozen hands
I have the heart
that warmed them
at my fingertips

plum blossom
caught in your hair
falls down
when you pick me up
to carry over the mud

laying beside you
on a fresh pile of hay
for the first time
I forget to count
the calls of cuckoo

Years of home
in three suitcases:
deep breathing

With his crying baby
he moves in the train's passage:
marital tension

Smoking woman
under a naked tree:
moon garden

Night's passage
on the beach with her –
silky sting

Orange streak
through the clouds –
seat belt fastened

Fortune melting
with change in the wind –
summer-end

frosted
stems erect
frozen in time

melting
emerald shoots
to the sun

falling
icicles drip
the snowflakes disappear

motions
twigs, feathers
home-sweet-home

fledglings
gape, stretch
ready for flight

mysterious
adventures ahead
soaring through blue

flirting
found friends
start over again

slumbering snail . . .
if only yesterday
had waited

i saw you
standing in line this
afternoon
at the post office . . .
winter came too fast!

waiting for me
with yesterday, a
snail blowing words

i talk to
you night after night
catfish . . .
and still this
gentle tugging

i too sleep
alone in winter,
brother cricket

i stir the
the new year in a
cup of coffee,
plucking words from
clumps of cloud

returning dawn
to the moon . . .
cherry, blossoms!

to be a
butterfly again . . .
wintering
in dreams, waiting
to unveil myself

your sandals,
moon, sewn
of cloud

clouds swim
upstream into autumn's
mouth, leaving
me to reinvent
what could have been

sunrise . . .
a deer bowing
to blossoms

alone in
his shell to dream,
what will snail
write when the clouds
form words made of leaf?

include me in
your dream, marmot . . .
i'm lonely

the haiku
you'll write, snail,
when words
inside you burst
into stars

in the morning,
dew drops scented
with you

new year's eve
a middle aged man
sketching spain on
the bathroom wall
with miles davis

new year's eve . . .
an old man painting thoughts
on his window

celebrating
the new year on my
back reading
kijo's haiku
in a whisper

reeds in winter . . .
a heron listening
to herself breathe

in his loneliness,
the bay mocks him with
giggles of light

even darkness
can't discolor the clouds . . .
a long winter

even in
darkness, the clouds
misbehave

new year's morning . . .
my shadow beats me
to the restroom!

the walls, this
evening, spray painted
with winter

your seed, this
morning tree, in a
damp tomorrow

BOTTOM OF THE BARREL
Jane Reichhold

the year wintered
in the rings of a fir tree
they say blood
of the bedrock’s river roar
mushroom and mud the days

secretly water
walked arm in arm with trees
some thought of rain
but it was the edge of thunder
urging moss to put down roots

the foolish moon
traditionally the rain’s slick ghost
sloping hillsides
all the way to the sea debris
smothered the sky with birds

changes to move
religion lived as new creatures
little goddesses
wearing red socks and bibs
from the pure heart of rivers

in the painting
appears the summer heart
north of the raven
the misted morning cut holes
so songbirds could nest

early birds
sing to dominate the trees
to a hungry cat
passing roses and raspberries
are the thorns on bare stalking

giving away
deer-proof butterfly bushes
the geranium
choked out by scotch broom’s yellow
beware of exotics in your home

helix serpentine
following a river of leisure
heredity has inside
the way we lie together in bed
the way notes lay on the lines

the clock struck
yet the numbers stay stuck
in the boy’s throat
a knife cuts into a fruit
the silver full of hunger

under sunny skies
snow falls a radio away
bits of history
living several lives at once
in my pockets life and death

Inhaled as vaporous light
You tiptoe through this pageant
Off all things loosened.

I worry about you
there in that distant place
not knowing
beyond these trees and hills
and just these hopes for comfort

standing on the bridge
gazing at the frozen creek
snowflakes start to fall
so long ago it seems
that summer day we kissed

like that snow
which softly falls and covers
everything
is this longing which has me
staring off into space

boiling tea
with evaporated milk
and cardamom
getting used to the taste
of her culture

red sky this morning
these skittering leaves for travel
companions

CW Hawes

this morning
I find myself driving into
the golden moon

August sun
streams through the window
the picture in my cube

back from Iraq
in time for apple harvest
no hands

the white moon
all the white faces
in the white coffins

like scrap yarn
these left-over thoughts
never to be knit
into anything useful
except to comfort me
Jeanne Emrich

milky blue –
our last hours together
the veins in my wrist
return like rainwater
to the sea
Jeanne Emrich

flesh weeps, bones sigh
loyal to water, to stone
though the dirt path
erodes beneath my feet
I follow it
Jeanne Emrich

that cliché
of how old age tells
on a person –
still, if you halt the whirling dance, 
I'll reveal what old age tells me

I work my way back
to those early Zen days,
and I recall
the master's keisaku stick:
said or not said, thirty strokes!

angry
overtheway life narrow-s
wi]th a g/ e,
ev-en these fi-ve linesdow
n/splintered lefandright

on a Zen
scroll seen in an old
house,
this chestnut, it tells me,
contains the entire world

learning
that chewing is an art
for health,
I manage 7l even on an
inch of carrot

dreaming
of cherry blossoms
yet so reluctant
to make plans
for this long voyage

face
touching bark
I listen
to the heart
of the great oak

in the presence
of dahlias
I hear
people singing
and clapping their hands

my bed and pillow
are made of sleep
I pull the blanket
of sleep over me
I am sleep itself

he brings me red roses
and so much more
have you ever known
the sun to keep
its shine to itself

on a narrow road
wandering self away
eyes and mind alert
the brush takes flight
in an open sky

can you hear them
typewriters…
jazz…
no sober poet wanders
beneath these city lights

My legs
heavy with pain
don't move:
sit still, await
someone to lift

summer – noon –
curling up with a string
of thoughts

palm tree
shadow of a finger
pointing at me

vertigo
a vulture climbing
through the sky

spring morning
learning the art
of saying bonjour

spring equinox
the blossoms
are quiet this year

withering the shadows
of redwoods…
these strong winds