POEMS of SIX POETS
(Summer 2016, Volume 4)
(Summer 2016, Volume 4)
Geoffrey Heptonstall
The Transference of Time The waters rise above the mark And all we can see is the tide Submerging shingle of the strand, A coming and going of oceans Lapping the seawall stone, The always accidental shaping Of continents in motion. Stirred by the storm, the sea falls Against land, of water flowing Like stars, those other worlds Floating in the mind Beyond the meaning. Here is more than simple earth And less than a claim to heaven. We name this as elsewhere There to step upon the sacred site Of the ocean’s origins, a spring In innocence so naturally wild, Raising the question with no answer. Across the low water strand Because life will last for ever As surely the sea returns. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
John Davis Jr.
The Art and Science of Hay-felling The way we made a rectangular bale tumble from the barn loft into our truck bed was greatest at midpoint: when in the air the straw body on its axis of descent released a halo- golden dander trail like wax drops from Icarus or those few matter specks before the Big Bang of its weight rocked our Ford, squeaking its shocks. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Rajendra Sharma
The Moon Over the Prairie Up sails the moon over the shimmering Kankakee, weaving its way through tallgrass, its banks dappled with vivid violet clumps of prairie onion, fiery red Michigan lilies lush stargrass. The mooncrazed wind goes galloping past the purple spiderworts which the Cheyenne youth held forth once like magic wands to woo their lissom belles. Ring-necked pheasants with glossy plumage prance around their mates through bluegold april days and the loud mating call of the barred owl crescendos through the still night of the wet woodlands. The eastern meadowlark’s song goes ringing down the summergreen corridors of waterside willows and the mockingbird trills as the Big Dipper beams. Looping fireflies spray the air with silvery fireworks as they court their eager mates. Yet all too brief is the summer song, for the bloom soon pales, the songsters flee to the sunnier southern plains and only the coyotes plaintively complain when blizzards blow across the snow-bound acres, while the blazing moonlight fades away in the fog. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Matthew Babcock
On the Last Day of the Mayan Calendar A van of modern mystics, we migrate south, our medicine to drain the drowsy blood of December from our heels and swoon under the hoodoo skies of Nevada. We speak of the end of the world like giddy girl scouts eager to leap from the crumbling tower of this century into the path of meteors. Do all races prefer the numb slumber of The End over Tomorrow’s Cataclysm of Red Mornings? The desert glows like a pink planet. Backbones of mountain ridges rise in brittle light, as blue as brimstone. Charred necklaces of cars rattle from Primm Valley to Barstow. We fall silent, mulling prophecies: Will jaundiced clouds drip sulfuric mist? Whose dart pops the black party balloon of time? How will we look in our volcano baths, sipping margaritas of moon ash, our bodies Christmas boxes of bones curled in ribbons of crispy skin? The problem for descendants of sun worshippers is no flint knife carves a prayer chamber in your chest. No fist of fire scoops your twitching heart and spoons it into the hot wound of heaven. Each orbit stifles a yawn of belief in a bustling bazaar. Rapture slips from the babble of green parrots and fumbled baskets of jipijapa leaves. Bloodlines thin to a last chance for gas. But at this late date something tells me the 1-800-Who’s-Your-Daddy? billboards will remain as inscrutable as any Dresden Codex. No doomsday will stop the great-tailed grackles from flitting like chatty reapers in silken cowls through the honey locust trees at the Family Plaza in Springville, their nests capped in snowfall two feet deep. Come Month of Zip! Month of Uo! Chicken Little kneels before Kukulkan! Past Baker, California, Home of the World’s Tallest Thermometer, a badger-faced woman in a blasted Tioga camper, high priestess of the road, speeds her grungy sons through the creation myth of the day. She wears the smile of the trickster, hub caps flapping like rusty talaria. With my crew asleep in back, I nudge the speedometer to eighty, inches from her bumper, seconds from painting a sacrificial stripe of my family’s blood on the highway. A golden smear of bugs greases our windshield, carcasses as sparse as souls of slaves smashed at high speed, the way we all hope to be killed. Over the wheel I bow to her Kansas plates and BMX bikes tangled like hieroglyphs to read: Assume the feeling of a wish fulfilled! Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Claude Clayton Smith
Until* Until the day that all the stars collapse upon themselves in clouds of light and dust (or raise their fissile mushroom heads, perhaps), as quantum physics proves what physics must-- Until on Earth the oceans split and flood the poles as if old Moses bade them to, and cities lies awash in salty blood-- I’ll bide my time and concentrate on you. Apocalyptic visions slip and slouch through history to leave us in their wake, but not a damnéd one, in truth, can vouch for Truth. Imagination fails. Forsake the future, then, for this—the day we share with atoms that bombard the very air! *Spring 2016 Sonnet Prize Winner. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Des Clark-Walker
Swan River, 1697 Along the western shore of the Great South Land a thousand miles of white sand beaches are fanned by strong salt breezes drawn inland by summer heat. Between intermittent cliffs a tidal river gives access to Vlamingh and his sailors rowing longboats as they search for the shipwrecked. On reaching a wide, shallow bay bordered by sandy beaches, a camping site under peppermint trees proves ideal. At the end of night many birds join the dawn chorus seemingly led by ravens as they fly into an undulant ‘aaarc’. Overhead a large flock manoeuvres to touch down on the water alighting to feed, they are swans, black swans with red bills. But all swans are known to be white. For the crew the shock is great the impossible is possible, the Black Swan moment is born. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |