Category Archives: POETRY

Advent in a COVID Year

POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by David Adams

The cure for loneliness is solitude

—Marianne Moore

Good poet, I must beg to differ,
Especially in this year when our lives became
More dangerous than even we could dream.

Dawn has turned my yard to monochrome,
The snow from yesterday pocked by clumps
Of leaves that form the surface of a moon.
But more than season speaks of waiting.

In this long year of loneliness, my lover
Metamorphosed to a stone of now
That one might touch yet never reach,
Dark magic with no “true apothecary.”
My friends die off like ancient trees
Snapped at last by living’s winds, marked
In some accounting book I cannot see.

And yet, last week I watched three horses
Turned to pasture. At first, they sprinted each
To corners of the field, then slowly drifted
Toward a center, as if remembering themselves.
They nickered, pawed, and shook their manes.
And then these strong and fearsome animals,
With happy teeth and lips and tongues,
Began to groom each other’s heads and flanks.
It seems that only creatures can speak tenderness.

Within a night of sleep, a dream of stone and snag,
I watched again my father climb a ladder,
stringing boughs and lights for our whole town.
In those auras he looked down at me.
Catch a snowflake on your tongue
And you will have it all your life.

Twenty years ago in Michigan, I watched
A townsman hanging lights upon a bridge
That crossed the Looking Glass River
And penned these lines: “Father, do we go
To Heaven/Or does it come to us?”
In that dream he thought it was a prayer.

Now I sense that prayer is more
A trade of breaths than pleading of desires.
Hier bin í. Da, bist du.1

As the sun begins to lift a little, and
The world brings color to its frames again,
Drawing near such scenes that I can add
To memory—seeking there my hopefulness.
Here I am. It is enough.

1 These words (“Here I am./There you are.”) appear in Randall Jarrell’s poem A Game at Salzburg, in which he casts them as an exchange between ourselves and God. Make of that what you will.

Until Now (Perhaps)

Piquant, POETRY, PUNCHY

by Elsa Johnson

The Goddess is about life                      the all of it

the ever sprouting                   ever growing           

ness              :                tender shoot in       

tended garden          and     rampant weed that runs

and runs and overtakes             But also    she is about

the mole         the vole         the cat         the hawk   

the blood       the fur       that’s left behind 

so ripped        so torn        one cannot say what was

it                                  She is about life          the equality    

of its dying    ness                     To her     It’s the same Eden 

              

Rose        and thorn of rose         thistle flower        and thistle

prick                 fur of mouse             bone of bird             rock

tree       sky          cliff         gut         glut        the streaming 

stream        and driest dust     :      She does not hold

one thing more                          precious        

(that’s the job we give to God)                     

They are       you are       we are          all          

just skim       just skin      just pulse      until we’re 

not           (not mind     not heart     not flesh)            

               

She is everywhere                in everything           

Not cruel                        not kind             

fecund              indefatigable            

Praise her 

Walking Today

PERTINENT, POETRY

by Elsa Johnson

Walking today

brought no solace         
One of the  ancient  mighty ones  
came down   —   a huge oak      three hundred years      
old    sundered overnight               Fierce  winds ripped him 
bare rooted     out of the over-saturated soil    
He lies now broken 
hollow

It has been a long cold spring           troublingly 
abnormal      Even in the fairest times I walk these woods trying    
not to see distressing things                 like these ruined young 
sugar maples the squirrels have stripped of bark   thereby  
killing them                  It seems a whole generation 
will be lost       ( but when does the world not
live in existential  threat? )         It is not  
possible                for me to not  
notice         not feel some
measured
grief

My love     who often walks beside me    walks  
with purpose        —     he looks ahead and does not see   
such things       unless I show him      how deep in the woods last fall’s pale
gold leaves       like small hands      cupped ( like prayers )     still cling
hang down    and grace slim branches          Young beech
trees     delicate    silvery       somehow hopeful

My friend   the naturalist    says      
Perhaps they are trying to become 
evergreen                I think I understand
what he means   —    old beech trees 
do not do this

Our eyes notice            must focus on         change
and error         beauty and wreck       as with these exponential 
invasive tangles    rose    barberry     briar  —   thorny plants that do not 
belong in these woods      and there is no longer enough 
of me     left             to rip them out the way 
I used to       although I try       and

still wage war for sake of the old natural order   —    
cut-leaf toothwort        blooming      :        the ephemeral 
white butterflies it hosts     :       first  blooms of cherry by the lake    
white       washed across a grey fused sky               You know  —   
or should      —       nature on her own is never scanting 
Gaps will be filled      just not always 
with what you wish

There are thorns embedded in my flesh       knobbing my fingers              
They are part of me         You must take me as I am today         open and
touched      by these young buds of shadblow       serviceberry        
mother        —        each small bud cloaked
in softest grey silk fur
that aches for 
stroke

Renascence on Mt. Battie, 2019

PERIPATETIC, PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by David Adams

And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
—“Renascence”
Edna St. Vincent Millay

—For Leslie Henry and Dorothy Quimby, librarians, both, and stewards of our words.

The fog below, the clouds above, the mists between.
I remember well the times when that pewter lens
Was all this altitude revealed. So I looked,
As always, within it for the way beyond.

On that day of unexpected clarities
From atop the mountain we could see
The whole reach of Penobscot Bay
Where the sun could shift its shape across
The waters, the islands once so close,
So familiar, dispersed like children,
The spruce dark mystery no one solves.

One winter a friend and I had paddled out for lunch.
There was a cabin crumbling to its cellar.
Some logs and blocks, a rotting squirrel.
But the shafts of light between the trees
Speckled down on everything. We almost spoke.
But suddenly the wind came back northeast,
And we beat hell for home like frightened prey.
Later there was time to wonder what we’d learned.
All of that was someone else’s life now long ago.

Once in summer, I made the climb alone,
Tracing the very steps she took between
The sun and the footfalls of shadows
In ghostly firs, as if bracketing a line
That quivers between hope and desolation.
From there that water that could terrify
Seemed quiet as a mirror. It may be
The oldest tale: water, stone and wood,
The light, the dark, and those who see.

So many years ago I left a cruel interment
In the valley of the Carrabassett, a daughter gone,
Her hope extinguished by a patch of ice,
The dark trees welcoming beneath the stars.
Christmas looming. It happens that way.

When I was so alone, I used to listen for the silence
Between carols on the radio. Waiting.
As if each soul would find the moment there
To seek ransom from its captive life.
I am guessing that she would understand.

That sunny day atop the mountain,
We crouched where she would crouch to contemplate
A life as open and as fearsome as the Bay.
Lights on the rocks like words,
Burning even on the glyphs of lichen.

Tonight the snow is spinning, and we are home
In Ohio, almost a universe away. I should know.

I do not need a photograph to see your smile,
To feel your hand half around my waist.
A night ago I watched you light a little candle.
I wanted to say something. I have stories
Like candles, but I decided just to watch and wait.
I think I know the tricky craft of hopefulness.

“Look one way and the sun is going down,
Look the other and the moon is rising.”

“Father, do we go to heaven,
Or does it come to us?”

But thinking makes nothing quite so dear
As the breaths we share. Tonight they wind above
Our shoulders like a prayer.
A prayer is a story, too.
I believe that she would understand.

To friends both near and far. Leslie and I visited Mt. Battie this autumn past. It was a perch that drew me many times and in different moods and seasons during my nearly 30 years living in New England. The image stayed with me, especially after rereading the plaque bearing the lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s famous poem “Renascence.” I went back to that poem, and one of my own began to stir. By November, having visited my mentor Frederick Eckman’s paean to Millay, I realized I had stumbled on the next Advent poem. A curious poem about the hope of the season, perhaps. But aren’t they all?

The first set of quoted lines near the end are from Randall Jarrell’s poem “The Mockingbird.” The second set came from my older Advent poem, “Advent at the Looking Glass River.” They seemed to fit.

The Fledgling

POETRY

by Elsa Johnson

Look           here is God     sparkling in the trees                  Rain

fell in the still-dark morning                                   leaving bright

drops        God-traces     caught and cupped      :    in each leaf

a God-mote       —       and look             here too is God’s bright

face                  wafting         lofting                     in the delirious

perfumed air                                and the bees rest in the phlox

so darkly sated              with God-drink                    they cannot

move                

                            //             For days now we have been hearing

first here         then there                    calling    each to each    a

hawk and her child                                    a fledgling       full lost

in the pain of its                                               impending parting

crying        find me          feed me         mother!                  Lying

here   with my knee pain                pained by the world’s deep

need    and pain               I too cry     :      Find me!         Seek  —

2

In the dark hours                            I wake   to some small beast    

in terror            fending off attack                                       In this

too    is the divine                   —                    that face we do not

like to face                                           Then in day    back on my

porch          warmth dazed once more            I watch bemused     

the hum                                and happy-seeming-ness    of life  :

goldfinch on sunflower                                      robin hopping to

feed her own fledgling                              standing in the street

with mouth agape                                     knowing that     above        

somewhere             is a young hawk                  learning to feed

itself                              It took to the air                They are aloft

now                 We see them      soaring      swooping    —     low

shadows        swift across the earth    

                                                                        //                There is a

cold clean current                  hidden        in the day’s warm air

3

Some weeks have passed                              My knee is healing              

It’s been a gift                       to be obliged    to                  watch

wait               wonder                     The hawk child is far ranging

now         flies wide          climbs high             it’s voice a distant

pulse          a language                             passing through the air                                

sharing                                                        information I can only

guess            —          how    perhaps    there is a  vole     darting     

from bush to hole                                      upon the earth below                     

What dangers                of rare devising                              await

 a hawk not yet wise to its world?                                 And that

other fledgling?        

                            //           It rained again               The rain fell in

the still-dark morning           God-motes       —       bright drops

sparkling             —                     caught and cupped within each

leaf                                     and the bees rest darkly in the phlox   

Deer: Remnant Anomaly

POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

It pauses me                      this thing     I have found             that

is not of                        the awakening world                    hidden

halfway up the slope                   halfway           up the trail    in

winter’s windfall of       downed limbs        dead leaves       last

year’s dry crushed grass     :     Stiff leather         with battered 

bits  /  tufts  /  patchy-furred       on it          —        a tired thing 

lying     lasting here                                    Some creature’s coat

The wild’s    beasts of prey               have done their work well

This is not the first    part    I have found                           Decay

has long since                     eroded out                  its essence   —

the spirit of what lived             :             its run               its grace

its bound         its bounce      —     all fled                       Toeing it

over                                   do  I not touch            briefly            its

terror    /      the short chase     /     tear    /     the taking down

Small Poems

POETRY

by Elsa Johnson

Haiku

New sun — who dares shine
back   ?   red breast blazing  :  you there —
cardinal   —   sun thief!

Hari Krishnan [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Hyacinth

Blossom    /     parted
into curls         like shaved wood
or   upright octopus  /  arms     turned up    all
tips     /      A tower’s      bell         split into shards
A fragrance      pungent      /     death
heavy      /      Oh sweet
purple painted
light

The wub [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

(Moral) Vacuum

It bites
When the snow
crunches like this
breathing sucks air in deep
to a space smaller
then the head
of a sin

Jason Hollinger [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

Ring

Ring –
bells of my words
Meet in mid air
Bruise there and batter
Mix there and marry
Tarnish and
tarry

November

PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Mark Gilson

One day the leaves are gone.
And the wind makes dying sounds
within the humbled branches.
It is time.
The slow earth yields its precious heat.

In a cold hush before the sun
our garden perishes within the arms
of a stranger.  Vain, inexorable, patient,
He chalks his victims
in a pale and savage dust.

Marigolds and sweet alyssum
wither uncherished beneath the brittle weeds
that overtook our nobler intentions
in warmer months, when we were young
and soon distracted.

Rain, snow, frozen soil, the way
the blackbirds undulate across drab
sheets of grey sky in curving
arrows toward the recent past…
so many things go unremembered.

Whether

POETRY

by Elsa Johnson

A Simple Poem about Whether

How I love      a growling sky                                            after the grey

cloud dragons have slipped in                     stealthy                on their

thick     padded      feet     —      so many of them                  crowding

together                                They are alchemists                   conjuring

weather                           muttering guttural spells                   arguing                          

over whether                                             to send down sheets of rain

  /       walls of sleet        /                                      or merely a damping

dribble           Who should start the wind machine?                 Should

it stroke cheeks    /    or crack stone?                 caress trees    /     or

crush them?            harrow birds ?      oh yes !     —   and harry them             

How much     and where          —        all      the whethers of weather                                   

I love             the gravel                of their                    muffled ire      —                   

their mounded shapes                         But see    —    they can’t agree          

They’re              stealing away                                 down sky corridors         

Landscape

BEAUTY, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Kate McCane from Short Stuff Stories

A poem about city life.

I would like to write  

one of those sweeping 
beautiful descriptions 
of empty landscapes 
where you can go 
miles and miles 
and never see another person 

Where the cold emptiness 
is still somehow beautiful 
and the loneliness 
feels like  a prayer 

But in truth 
I am a city girl.  

The furthest I can get 
from another person is the 
distance from one apartment 
to another.  

My moments of solitude

are snatched, secretly, 
late at night in 
empty train carriages, 
after the shows have let out 
before the drunks 
have stopped drinking. 

My gorgeous sunsets 
are framed by the 
space between buildings; 
they highlight smoke stacks, 
steeples, fluorescent adverts. 

Sirens fill my nights 
and the stars are 
pale and insubstantial 
against the glow of orange streetlights. 
 

And yet there is beauty here 
in this teeming mass of strangers 
pressed together into an impossibly 
small space. 

There is a thrill of connection 
in looking into brightly lit 
office windows to see the workers 
working late 
and a strange camaraderie 
in the shared detachment 
found in people stuck 
in long lines in grocery stores. 
 

It is not empty here 
and I am not alone, 
but this landscape is 
still 
 

beautiful.  

Kate is an Australian living in Berlin. She can be found at Short Stuff Stories. She publishes additional material for her supporters on Patreon.