WELCOME TO DAY 25 OF OUR "30 POEMS IN 30 DAYS" BLOG; PLEASE SEE OUR GOFUNDME SITE: https://www.gofundme.com/f/30-poems-in-30-days-for-ithaca-sanctuary-alliance

 DAY 25

                                           How to Paint a Cloud         Fran Markover

 

                             You'll need satin finish, sea sponges, cloud-wash

 

If there's none of the above, watch a damselfly skim sun-petalled ponds

 

                             Consider pitch, speed, the weight of snow on a branch

 

                             Brush-in-hand, memorize dogwood and a weeping birch

 

                             Think cotton candy at the fair, the sheep counted on before sleep

 

                             If sad, meditate by mountains; when happy, wear pearls

 

                             Invoke any nymph who dances behind the curtains of rain

 

                             Accept any invitation: marriage of ink and water, silent retreats

 

Introduce yourself to Mother cloud, compliment her soft gray curls

 

Take time to know each cloud family, their personalities, the paths they bank on

 

Learn who's veiled, coiffed in feathers, who seems frazzled or follower

 

                             Look long enough: angels, lost pets, a shadow tucked into bed

 

                             Then let go: everything dense becomes light

 

                             Leave enough space, so comes grief

 

         

 

Untitled Poem                 David Regenspan

 

Once, after a great loss, I looked down

To see a fossil lying at my feet

In a public park created to serve the living,

Yet here was a thing lying lifeless beneath for eons,

A half shell of a sea creature long extinct,

Indifferent to strolling couples and children at play,

But, after all, that whole city was filled with fossils,

Covering the hillsides, built into foundations,

Lying beneath each street like witnesses

To all our silly weakness.  Death is stone

They seem to say, do with that what you will.

My loss lies buried within me, the fossil

Is on a shelf, the city left behind.

Old pain is stone, do with that what you will,

Lying beneath the dirty dishes and unmade beds,

The plans and promises, the walks in the park.

 

 

Milling     Carol Whitlow

 

The grasses burn to clear the fields

O the spring the green shoots the bright bursts of flowers

Before seeds fill out

O the wind waving the tall grasses

And the sun lighting up each stalk

The bird singing its heart out on a little grass perch

And winging overhead in evening

O the rain, the drought, the storms to endure

 And yet that field still stands

Until it offers up its seed at harvesttime

 

O the milling of that seed

The grinding, the pulverizing

So it can be nourishment

For people – the whole world!

So we can stand and withstand

And stand with each other

Like those stalks of wheat in the field

We will persist

And give of ourselves to make a better world. 

 

 

 

Fantasy Roused by Anonymous Childhood Rhymes

 Martin Bidney

 

jocular sonnet in rhymed couplets

iambic tetrameter with calculated anapests

x/  x/  x/  x/

xx/  x/  xx/  x/

 

“A deaf policeman heard the noise

And arrested three of the two dead boys.”

 

You like the tale that I just told?

When the men roamed free, and their joys were bold,

 

The guys who’d bested spongy muck

Took a rest at night while they blest their luck

 

And a soul would rise by a campfire spell

And of hell or heaven a tale would tell

 

And the trees loomed down and the dumbstruck owl

With a cry gone wild and a ghost-high howl

 

Might strike a fire in the soul of some –

And a shrieking fiend from a throat might come

 

And laugh like Satan crammed with scorn –

With the pale sun waitin’ to wake at morn.

 

 

          OUR TOWN                   Susan Weitz

This is my town now,
with its seven valleys
 and three main streets,
its sky so clear, it frames
 a falling leaf.
I haven’t lived here long,
 so I can’t reminisce
about the boom time,
 the fine houses,
the factories and fancy shops.
I take it as it is,
fast food and dollar stores,
 state college kids.
So what if the old library
 gets hot in the summer?
So what if even the pawn shop
 went out of business?
My grandparents
 never heard of this place,
and even my old friends ask,
 “Where, exactly?”
But the trees know
 where to find me; so do
the hummingbirds, who outbuzz
 the traffic down the hill.
Even the cadmium-colored
 spider on the porch says,
“This is our town.”

 

Ornithology                JOANNA GREEN

At the honky tonk swing dance 
Down at the Grange last night 
Sweet rock-steppin’ in the corner with my love

We pretend to know what we’re doing
Watching the other dancers strut their stuff
The women sparkling in Cinderella shoes
Their bare skin sheened with sweat

Our friend in jeans and floppy T-shirt
Dips and turns them with restrained flamboyance
A stack of papers peering out of his back pocket
Playing his partner like a fancy toy at the end of stick
Spinning her then turning her this way now that
Pulling her in to turn her around
Pushing her back out
Then reeling back in with that magic energy
That connects dancers and lovers
Like two magnets
The push pull push pull

The unashamed sex of it all!
Men with stone faces spread their fingers wide
Across the backs of women
Holding them close in, hips moving like mirrors
Like the bills of two exotic birds in their mating ritual
The heat rising in that close hold
Until he releases her to swing out and away
With her face flushed

Or is it just my face, watching 
Like some lonely ornithologist?

 

Watching Rachel Maddow      SUSAN ESCHBACH

 

flummoxed

windfall

intimidation unsolicited

repose depose

rebuke bullpucky

barnburner

massive scenario

anodyne terms

Reader, speak these sounds aloud

find those vowels , the syncopation

The poetry of the news