Welcome to September 27th's blog offerings, and sorry you have to do so much work to find the previous days' poems. Our blogging program is rather primitive and tech corporations are not devoting adequate resources to their not-for-profit ventures! (a bit of poetic corporate critique for our readers!)
DAY 27, SEPT 27
Poem (ROB SCOTT)
Chain Canada
A
A pair of eyebrows searching for a face
Evensong FRAN MARKOVER
The flock, purple martins, swoop over sweet peas
vining the shore like enchanted beans, vie
for the birdhouse staked into Lake Cayuga. Bird-
antics, bird-speak transporting me to church,
not just any church but some sweat-stained back-
woods chapel, where congregants can't help
but shake and jump. The birds performing belly skims,
their lifts aerobatics and Hitchcock, caprice and joy
as they ready fledglings for flights. From solos,
coloraturas jangle into black-feathered chorus,
chortling Hallelujah bugs, soft wind, acacias.
Chant how Hunger and Cold plunge, plash, possess.
The choir reprising gutturals as the lake becomes
numinous, illumined by Full Harvest Moon.
Testimonials persist, not with immersion, as the
birds graze waters, but with amazing grace.
Northside III SUSAN ESCHBACH
Night walking
Orion southerly, Cassiopeia up east
the dipper and north star all holding their place
in my part of the world
porches stoops strewn bikes
bold stripes of pride flapping here
profound black and white signs claiming window there
royal blue against hate planting its home on a lawn
with pride lives matter no hate here
Look up! A gibbous pushing to fullness
striving to hold all the light there is
lighting us here
on the north side
On a Passage from Sidney Lanier’s “The Marshes of Glynn”
MARTIN BIDNEY
altar-like the sixes rest upon the fives:
amphibrachian hexameters and pentameters
maestoso con amore
x/x x/x x/x x/x x/x x/
“Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God.”
Possession’s a fetter, as money and fame we suppose that we own
Can shackle and manacle wildness of mind. We explorers alone
Are kin to the height of the sky that almighty entices the drive
Empowering mountain and flower alike at their goal to arrive:
All we might dream that we own, if permitted to grow,
Quickly will prove to be rooted in that which we owe.
All we behold in the soul is our Fortunate Field
Planted with lilies of light that will kindliness yield.
The future approach with a purity like to computer-screen light,
The noon-tide of wisdom alert to espy while imbibing the might
Unending extended. Be open-eyed child who the heaven has felt
As made of a radiance blending with mercy-dew, coldness to melt,
Which dew in the eyes will by empathy generate, too.
Be moved by the wind that the blooms will enraptured bestrew!
Let garden be emblem of pardon, for everyone sown:
The nest of the marsh-hen itself is a heavenly throne.
Catching Up JOANNA GREEN
Let’s see.
So many should do’s
Pressing... where?
Inside my head?
Maybe
Guts?
Two days late in my 30 days of poems.
Or is it 3?
Given up for
Grandchild, the first
Hugs since the pandemic,
Family dinners with no masks!
All should do’s banished
For the weekend.
Now, I see
The trees are turning way too fast
After the long summer with no rain.
One, down the hedgerow,
So brilliant, flaming,
Calls out
Look up silly people!
Ok.
I’ll make you a poem.
Cross it off my list.
What next?
Forecast JOANNA GREEN
Today will be high
With tartly funny skies
Tonight lows in the doldrums
Chance of a shitstorm
Tomorrow pain likely
Cupidity 100 %
DISTRACTION Susan Weitz
Watch closely.
Distraction equals
loss.
The leaves will
have reddened and fallen
while you were thinking
about dinner.
Like that Sly Fox game
children play,
change sneaks up
when your back is turned.
One day there’s water
in the well;
the next, the world’s
on fire.
How grief sees CAROL WHITLOW
Is this how grief comes?
in the night
a sudden awakening to vigilance
Thoughts, thoughts,
An urgency in the heart
Then gently gently
A tear
A small drop from the ocean of pain.
Is this what grief needs?
Seeking comfort
As the pain eases through
What are the words to that song?
O de sun goin’to rise in de we-es’
An’ de moon goin’ to set in de se-ea
An’ de stars in de heavens goin’ to bow down bow down
We will all bow down
To death.
Is this how grief goes, then?
Easing down slowly into a laden sleep.
Then morning, the light has come and been
Starting a new day
Which you rise to meet
Somehow . . .
Is this how grief sees?
Everything this day is sweet:
A jogger all in black, knit face-mask against the bitter cold,
His constancy comforts me.
A hawk on the side of the road ravaging her furred prey
Her feathered cloak so beautiful, her claws so deadly.
Yet I feel gratitude in the new day’s light.
Thank you, familiar jogger, hovering hawk,
Mail clerk with conversation about new trifocals,
Thank you life
How you be
how you be
Is this how grief moves then?
How it opens our ears, our eyes, our hearts?
Is this where grief goes?
Rising and setting with the sun, the moon, the stars,
circling with the hawk in the skies,
Treading the streets of the earth,
Reaching into memory, searching for traces of familiarity?
Is this what grief finds?
A new day
Never the same
Nonetheless – music, beauty, life -
Small consolations
Nevertheless.
UNTITLED David Regenspan
The summery tents of water trickle down
Over the gorge’s shelves of tawny rock
Past walls of stone so addling to the eye
Their reticulum of cracks like maps of nowhere
in particular. And yet the creek obeys
the stern demands of water ages past
that carved this gorge past argument and made
this road to the flats below. On the plain
are houses built for workers who once served
the college planted on the hill above.
Here the rocky curves and tumbles end
In streets as straight and simple as a promise,
The creek channeled and tamed. Here students stroll
Like woodland fauns expecting nothing more
Than sunlight on their faces, or a breeze
That ripples through their hair.
