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I. This Earthly Star
THE FRAME AROUND A THING
Through this window I can bear the birds that dart and disappear, and clouds and mist that drift like smoke and pass from sight, beyond the scope of my window to contain.
A crow takes refuge from the rain to pause a moment on the sill, then caws and gives a screech goodbye before flapping off into the sky. Emerald and violet in waning light, a hummingbird‘s helicopter flight shimmers a second and is gone. The day‘s now night and night is dawn. A bat flits blindly through the dark on nightmare wings. Hark! Dove ‘s calling dove as the night wind sings. Three stars have appeared to crown the moon and night is already afternoon. Trembling in the rain, the leaves are turning and turning in the breeze And morning comes again so soon. And evening comes so soon.
Out in the world the world ‘s so huge that like a closed fist my thoughts refuse to grasp at such enormity. My mind has room just enough for me. The window, though, sets Creation apart a sufficient distance from my heart, so as I have my coffee and gaze at birds and leaves and clouds, the maze of questions gets under control. I have my cup, my home, my role. Birds can flutter and disappear. I don ‘t have to follow. I ‘m here.
It ‘s the frame around a thing that makes it visible.
Oh, too glorious and vast, the mysteries as my years sail past! I ‘ll sit and seize one by one by one, the parade of minutes beneath the sun, and hold and behold until I die all the world with my small eye. —Sarah Shapiro
Climbing
I like to go sometimes up the quiet mountain.
I climb over rocks scattered before me like huge, white stepping stones.
I grapple their smooth, elusive grip. I scale hungry chasms stumble past towering trees
woven tightly like thatch. They disorient me obscure my vision
entice me with their endless gentle green. I hasten on refuse the lure to linger.
On my way a river confronts me severs my path.
I stare into it boldly see my drawn reflection in its clear, sparkling sheen.
I drink. Then, defiant, I ford the angry waters
I reach a snow-covered valley. It slopes gently up the rugged cliffs
that stand between me and the essence of my obscure desire.
The cold provokes me the wind warns. I press on through the deep blinding snow.
Sometimes I reach the top -- when I can --
sometimes
because the sky calls because the sun warms my soul because the light lifts me beyond my trodden shadow
—Mike Maggio
Woven Birds
A dozen separate strings of fat white birds cats-cradled overhead not touching, tiers that occupied their layer of the sky
like it was easy, like they never heard of bumps or gaps – like no one disappeared and left a hole in your formation. I
was just an earth-bound human gaping, and since I was driving, I could only glance up sideways at the white sheets flattening
like newspapers do, squeezed. So to me what should have looked like choreography
just looked impossible, as if their strands passed through each other, as if happenstance were all it took, and the whole universe slipped deftly edgewise under V-shaped strings
of fat white birds, in layers. Unraveling –
—Kathryn Jacobs
Linguistics
The Birds Begin at Four
I have heard them
where she lies
the brook ‘s secret murmur
the blissful sigh of yestereve ‘s cricket
when she breathes
the stars whisper
when she smiles
the sky is a field of ancient poppies
swaying in the moonlight
praying in the moonlight
I have heard the birds sing
where she lies
listen
to your soul
let life ‘s mysteries fill you with song
in the deep cool morning
where she lies
where she lies —Mike Maggio
DAWN
I am the ever-coming Prince of my Mother, this Earthly Star— You would fill with fear if my schedule by some cosmic cataclysm was delayed, you would be dulled by monotony if I arrived at each day ‘s same exact moment, you would be bored if every morning my light appeared to be at full capacity, you would never forgive me if my light cast ever-dwindling shadows, you would love me if I was the main attraction for every morning ‘s wake-up show.
I am— the constant worldwide seed that bursts into myriads of shapes and shades of abundance, the sole note that nudges night from inert silence to reveal day ‘s reverberating voice, the burst that drives animals and plants to perform their nearly infinite routines, the fulcrum where ignorance slowly yields to the often-shrouded beacon of truth, the jolt that changes thick, heavy failure into gleaming chains of wisdom, the shift that vaults one from a muddle into a new view of what lies ahead, the train that delivers to all living things nourishment and hope, the bridge, endlessly suspended between what is and what is yet to be.
Yes, I am the never-departing Prince of my Mother, this Earthly Star. —John P. Kneal
The Warrants
I will return to the Aegean, the sea Of my youth where dolphins raced after Our departing ship in swathes of light Breaching, jumping, leaping into silver arcs.
The Aegean hides its carnage of flesh Below the surface yet, deep sea-currents Diminish the virulence of the viruses That tatter our wounded world. I will
Commune with the cerulean waves Of the Aegean as they mingle with the gleam Of that navy-blue and teal mother-sea Where ripples and tides swell the billows
And a plankton-filled potency conducts the currents Through recurrent sun-cycles, our earth ‘s warrants.
—Emily Bilman
Keeper of Memories, Earth Speaks
Keeper of memories, Earth speaks in Seasons, Tells of roots with Holdfast in Stardust, Of seeds, reaching from sleep For the heat of a unseen sun.
Earth surrenders secret bones, Dinosaur footprints from clay matrix Changed to stone.
A persistence of wind Lifts the fine dust of sifting time. Water finds a way To carve through layered history.
Impulsive Primitive roar of exultation, As first fame seekers and treasure hunters Hold aloft like war clubs Fossil thigh bones.
Heedless excavation all around! They crated up the Great Bones As they tore the ancient stories From the ground.
—Margaret Fox
ALMA —Amichai Chasson
DON ‘T
Flashing schools of Humboldt squid deeply inform the dark.
Coupling cuttlefish proclaim their designs as dermal marquees.
The amoeboid octopus tastes and broadcasts with the tips of its skin.
Yet coleoids, like dogs and pigs and people, are off limits.
God forbids us from swallowing brilliant treyf. —Donald Mender
Winter Light
God scrubs up, aims her beam sharp and low: Everything looks magnified, pinned down tight On a white board - all her squirming specimens, Shining bright.
The sun, sticking to the inner lanes - I skim my life ‘s condensed version Through the leafless windowpanes, Already time for day again.
A starving fire in the west, Cinders shrinking into ash – These shorter days make darkness bolder. Its shadows stretch, touch my shoulder. —Ed Brickell
A Winter Walk
I walk out into the winter twilight, the cold slowly numbing my face. Someone has swept all the clouds towards the dying sun, and they rest in piles, tangerine and lavender, waiting to be incinerated.
Over my shoulder, the moon hangs, luminous, above a large sycamore whose ivory bones are emerging from its tattered bark.
Cars hurry by. The sunset is captured in a puddle. I turn home, watch the inscrutable moon through her veil of locust branches.
—Rosalie Hendon
LIGHT PUZZLE
Morning light
in forest,
Better at
beaches,
The windows
owe all shine
Meanwhile,
you ‘re talking up
I drive to
work —John Grey
ON CUE
When will you come, my felicitous passion- flowered trellis, my riotous carnival of peonies, my clematis, bastion of reliable roses? Without you, the pall of bowing daffodils cannot be erased by the wholly declared chanticleer pear tree in the front yard, the rapid pace of the blustering lake, this early fair spring morning— the clouds so low, leaving a white band of sky above the horizon on the dark blue. And the birdhouse, waiting for the red light of cardinals, the season of blue jays, common robins. And soon, the cue for the French tulips. And will you open true? —Paula Goldman
Poem on the Rise
Today the nasturtium flowers are blooming like crazy on the porch, the same way my heart yearns for love. They open in yellow, orange, colors no one has recorded yet in any chart or book and they lead me to think we can all become new again without any plan or extra razzle-dazzle, opening as they are utterly in a desert world of light and rain. Before this, all they did was grow leaves bountifully, small green sweet-hearted shaped leaves in abundance, so I stopped watering them for a few days day after day as if less was an elixir, a touch of earth. That ‘s when the first flower opened with hundreds to follow. And for now, I think they will stay this way, always blooming, hope inside the limited universe of flowers, trying to break free and I know more will come, impossible as it all seems in troubled times like these. Awash in inexplicable yellow, full of the urge to come back again, more, the bloom, the rise. — Charlene Langfur
Buoyancy
Our feelings, bittersweet, We observe them, those who walk on air, Laughing as they pass us on the street Buoyant and weightless as feathers, Blissfully unaware of the ground beneath their feet.
We once knew, all too well, The physics of their world— That glorious reprieve from gravity When we floated carefree on a current of air, All our substance, nothing but light, Elevated and flying high above those ordinary folk weighted down upon the concrete.
But I learned it isn ‘t only love that can fill you full of helium till you rise into the sky. A field of lupines with pink and purple spires, Birdsong in early morning, A small child ‘s hand in yours. Can lift your heart in flight.
Besides, I heard we walk on Whole ball fields of empty space Some charms and quarks but mostly nothing there. Which makes it clear— That quality of life that is so enviable Is something, in or out of love, we all of us can share. —Roberta Chester
Gardener
The way lettuce seedlings cling to the earth with their tiny rosettes as if there were nothing but success, potential, days of sun and rain ahead, a world tilting on its axis just the right distance from the sun, gently coaxing growth from the center, up and down, anchored and blooming, acquainting with nerves, sinews, breezes and dust. This is what I am nursing. This is what I make of soil and intention. —Michael Favala Goldman
Woodland Chorus
As white pine frantically Stretches her lower branches Toward the hardened earth Hoping for maybe one small Drop of moisture, she is Once again disappointed
Heartbroken, she listens to The saddened sighs of the others Sees their futile attempts to find Even the tiniest amount of water But with no rain, and low humidity Morning dew has also deserted them
Then, suddenly, a loud crack Breaks the stifling silence And, as if on cue, much needed Rain begins to fall, softly, quietly Then building to a grand crescendo Of the life-giving sustenance
One by one, white pine ‘s branches Lift, reaching for the darkened sky As she celebrates this wondrous gift While around her oak and maple Rejoice as well and, in exultation, The forest begins to sing —Dawn McCormack
Magic Isle A MATTER OF PROPORTION
Along the path are small stones, crumbs of rock Petals of a flower, scattered by someone who was asking a question A convoy of ants absorbed in the only world they have And above all these very far away Hangs one moon that shines on each piece Its searchlight of sadness or its luminary of tranquility —Tirtsa Posklinsky-Shehory tr. EC
Sentience
Tevis asks me if the large insect on the asphalt encircling the track is a grasshopper, and I tell her that it isn ‘t, that it is a green leaf insect, designed to look just like
a green leaf that seems attached to it, while we lap the track another time, until we find it in the same place, and it occurs to me that it has stuck to the asphalt in the heat
of the early morning sun, which gives me the impetus to take out my pocket notebook and carefully slide it beneath its legs, which I do, so that I can carry it into the shade behind the metal bleachers and into the cool dewy grass. Holding its spindly legs in my cupped palms, it decides that ‘s too precarious a ride, and it descends down to
of my corduroyed pant legs where it is intent on looking right into me as I look down, making sure it doesn ‘t fall off while I step towards
the shade. It has fastened itself, it trusts me. Its eyes deeply sentient. My soul and its soul are one, in the moment, connected in an instant of grace.
Katydid, you repeat your name and your ears are located at your knees, which you rub together to say it over and over again. I have failed to make peace with many people, but I have
intuited and felt a bond with you, however tenuous ours might be, we have shared an ostensible sentience and camaraderie, how upon placing you down in the shadows of the dewy grass
we lost you to your own nature, as we need to keep practicing how we must work to continue to find our own with one another and with ourselves,— our sentience seemingly wavering
and fading out, until perhaps we can realize that we not only have one another, and there is also really so little time, but if we focus on that, that maybe then, miraculously we will be able to see each other again.
—Wally Swist ____________
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