Joanne Durham, To Drink From A Wider Bowl

Old Folks

weather things. We hold our tongues

when young women bemoan their first

gray hairs. We doze off to dream

mid-afternoons on worn, cushioned couches,

then lie with unclosed eyes through the deep holes

of night. There’s a haze that hovers above

dates, faces, places – when was the summer

of the beach house in Ocracoke? Which snow rose

over the sills? Memory no longer chirrs

like an eager bird easing into morning wings, sipping

on rain that drips from every rafter. Time stretches

like an accordion, stores lullabies, love songs

and funeral chords between its folds. We are

thirsty still, but drink from a wider bowl.

Further details

Estill Pollock, Time Signatures

Emily Dickinson in Paradise, 1886

In my ragtag way, pleased with myself, finding

My fortune in my friends, my poems

Like shoeless children waiting at their doors

I am come to what I am, here, another

Amherst—the trees, white clapboard houses

Illusion I know, but my own

My poor sister, scrummaging my letters

After I left the room, so many

And she so ill-prepared—she had thought

An afternoon to mend my embarrassments

With grate and poker, only to find my cupboard

Wheezing with the weight of them

My friends keep my letters, too, my bobbin spool

Of brightly mingled threads

That make a life, the life they knew

As mine, as in my loving them I shared

Some secret self, purring sweetly

By the table, spoiled for little treats

The light here, a dapple of mimic shadows

My own shadow a cut-paper enterprise

Of folds and trinket pockets, sometimes tucked

About my heels, other times, loose—bolting

Like a spaniel through hedge

And barley row—I can but ask, What is real

My poems—close work, and slyly so, like bows

Looped round a prickly nettle, reserved

Between us, thus, the imponderable divide

Philosophers make much of, and there is a truth

In it, that shapes sobriety neat as pastry crimps

And demonstrates the means of quiet faith

My soul grown shrewd as Yankee gold

Unstitches shroudy dreams—someone I think

Should write this down, no fuss of copperplate

But an easy hand, on the hallway table the envelope

A recognition of delight beyond

The telltale twitch, the tickle cough that summons.

Further details

Susan Taylor, La Loba Speaks for Wolf

Wolven

To howl wolven

howl for joy

and the wonder of being

a link of sound

between earth and sky.

Why does a wolf

open throat the sky

at dusk

as the pack’s coats

melt into mist?

Each pack shelters

within its own sphere

yet its calls

reach out to the ever

inclusive wild.

Wolf howls are precise

gathering grandeur

wolf energy shifts

through forests

of lifetimes.

Poets and scientists

attempt to unravel

the marvel                      

of the evening star

as she rises.

Only wolf

nails it

in high flying notes

igniting

the ashen face of Venus.

Further details

Melody Wang, Night-blooming Cereus

Women’s Circle on a Friday Evening
 

What do you seek? the sage’s eyes are kind, her voice gentle,

allowing me space to revel in the silence. I am tense, unable

to meet her gaze. Clarity, I finally choke, my eyes closing

I can feel my heart, long burdened with sorrow, opening 

amid a room of strangers, releasing all that had bound me 

for the past decade marking your departure from this earth

Beyond this sanctuary, the sullen rain falls like a mantra.

As if in a dream or perhaps a faded memory, I hear 

the sage’s voice murmur something about eucalyptus trees

I sink into a kinder time of soft sunlight, lemony scent

of crescent leaves permeating the air, the familiar grove 

enveloping me in a warm embrace and at the far end  

I see you, one eye closed and one eye open — a smile

softening your face, you hover between realms, so aware

of both and yet enveloped in the sweetest slumber

See you soon, my smile back is tremulous. I slowly exhale

and linger in the stillness. I know this now: you lived. 

You felt it all and persevered. I will do the same.

Further details