I. Seasoned

PEOPLE WALKING IN THE SNOW

People are walking in the snow

In Sacher Park,

In its snowy expanse.

In the face of the white vision

That dances before them

They smile at

The clumps of snow on the trees,

They smile at each other

As if for a minute

They were exiled from themselves

And had reached a different region,

The district of most dazzling white

Within them.

—Ruth Gilead

translated by Esther Cameron

Seasoned

The nature of spring

newly alive and spreading green—

grimy winter windows whitewashed

to May, a sunset-breasted robin

across the yard

holds me astonished.

You’re old,

my grandson observes,

his short history sweet-scented curls

that fall over leaf veins

on the backs of my hands

he traces with a stubby thumb.

It is often on the way down I think

the sun makes my day

light’s great swill glazing hills

wild with the possibility

of even so—

of yet.

—Ilene Millman

A GARDEN WHERE ONCE MY MOTHER WALKED

Bees burrowing deep into each flower

this late afternoon,

as if to make visible the world of things:

petal, sepal, leaf;

finely filamented anthers burdened

with hymnal hum;

a bee’s hind tibia smothered in pollen.

Jubilation of manyness, a busy thrum,

as she walks among

the flowers. No threats, no stings. A few

fluttery encounters.

She longs for more. More murmurous bees

humming in her hair.

More warmth of flesh paired with flower –

less brevity, more hours.

The bees continue to work the garden,

sipping from quince

and plum, the purpling sage. She lingers

in the dusk.

The coo, coo-coo of a morning dove blues

the air like a sorrow.

—Constance Rowell Mastores

WILD ANISE

A wild anise that grows on the slope

outside my window slowly merges

into a featureless forgetting,

a mythic world that does not hold

its shape. I close my eyes, drift

away, lose sight of leaf and flower.

Startled from a dream, I wake,

gaze upon a structured world

of cedar, redwood, pine.

The wild anise on the darkened

slope recomposes, comes alive:

Toothed leaves. Clusters of small

white flowers. Stark. Bright.

Particular. Never so white as now.

—Constance Rowell Mastores

This Hour in Summer

White lilies lean over the soft dark grass of a summer evening

glows and hums unsettling

in this hour, in this only hour

all whispering of love and loss and desire

swift and strange as fairy lights

translucent and vertiginous the milky swarm of stars

the purplish shadows of the past lurking through the trees

spilling like a dark hood

this hour gives one more moment with the moon lending her light

and the ghostly forms of flowers close their mouths and bend and pray

in the crying mists

and creatures fly their fantastic ways

and we leave to restless lives

such is this hour

if you follow it

in summer.

—Susan Oleferuk

Hydrangea

These deciduous plants adorn

the lawns on which they lavish panicles,

large white flowerheads, growing

among spear-shaped evergreen leaves.

The bushes are as showy as their flowers

that are often thought

to resemble pom—poms.

Every spring and summer, I observe

their enormous blossoms bob among

their greenery as if noticing

someone one hasn’t seen for however long

and whose name is momentarily gone,

as I forget their names every season.

The flowers bloom steadily through

midsummer into August lushness,

then begin their pink

blush in the late summer coolness

among the first harbingers

of the frosts of autumn.

Each year the flowers are dried and sold

on roadside stands to celebrate the turning

of the great wheel of summer.

And each year I finally remember, then forget

until next season, when the hydrangea

bloom so whitely, while my memory slips

away ever so much from year to year, until

it maybe lapses entirely:

Hydrangea, may I remember your name,

as I might inhale your spicy fragrance;

may I recall in winter

the murmur of your petals

whispering on the summer wind.

—Wally Swist

The last water lily

of the fall butters

a browning pond,

a single gold fish

fell asleep beneath

the shrinking sun spot,

two morning glories clamber

into the noon hour of this—

their last day,

and their first.

—Vera Schwarcz

CASCADE

Seen on a night in November

How frail

above the bulk

of crashing water hangs,

autumnal, evanescent, wan,

the moon.

—Constance Rowell Mastores

NOVEMBER

Dark comes earlier and earlier now;

night sooner in a thick winter jacket.

From a nearby hillside drenched in shadow,

wild turkeys, with a great flapping

of wings, head back to the same old

redwood, the same old roosts. And I,

who only a month ago could sit outside

with a glass of wine and marvel

at the turkeys’ embrace of sky,

now peer through a kitchen window,

see no more than my face mirrored

by darkness, pale and odd, startled

by time. And I, who only wished to be

looking out, must now keep looking in.

—Constance Rowell Mastores

Fox Abandon

Awakening to the motion

detectors going off in the barnyard

is not anything new

but detecting motion within those

parameters is, sensing

there was something more to it

than the feral barn cat stalking

rodents. Raising the shade,

the fox must have heard me, or

seen my reflection in the window;

and it wasn’t as if I didn’t

have to exercise patience, knowing

how long the lights stay on

out there, aware that because they

stayed on, something slinked

in the shadows of hedge or barn.

When she appeared

in her regal red finery, not without

decorum, her tail nearly as long

as she was; the whimsical,

wry smile; the ears perked;

her exquisite gait that of a dancer,

her legs and feet propelling her

smoothly across the ground

in more of a glide than a trot

or a brisk bound, as she ran to

the peaked shadows

and between them, darting from

one point to another, possibly

running down a mouse, before

cavorting into the winter grass

north of the barn, the brilliance of

her coat catching different tones

of color, from a glistening blonde

to a wizened fox red, in the glare

of the spotlights, as she

eventually sprinted into

the darkness several hours before

the early spring dawn, which

would break over the ridge

she must have tracked over

by then, igniting the full palette

of her coat, as if she

had dragged it behind her across

the hills, and it caught on

the edge of the treeline, lighting up

the edge of the sky with a color

as bright as her quickness.

—Wally Swist

Seven Stages of Drought

the drought was worse than any that came before it

or, does memory elongate it like summer shadows?

we do not speak of it

though between us words hang as heavy as over—ripe fruits straining the vine

we step carefully around them

to acknowledge them might lend them validity

in the beginning, we recall the first condition of growth

the insistent refrain of the first cell

pushes and pulls its way toward water

we do not say so

to say so might prevent it

separately, as if in private grief,

we stand vigil over the dry, cracked earth

peer down on its mute lines

as if we could decipher a forgotten language

we do not share this hope aloud

we might extinguish it

we grow sullen as hot wind

we think of dead things

dried shells, limp wings, empty cases fill our minds

we do not refer to them

naming them might give them power

we identify ourselves as do orphans

by what we lack

when the drought finally ends we run for cover

we run from the cool rain scented with the fragrance

of blossoms it has drenched before it reached us

we distrust the rain

as if it threatens our identity

but in the night

we hear it throb against the pulse of fear

we listen until we distinguish one beat from the other

when we recognize the heart of rain

we embrace like old friends

and we are careful to speak of it

as if that will make it last

—Judy Belsky