The Beacon Hill Canto ----- poem by Koon Woon (unfinished)

The Beacon Hill Canto

I.

I will pay for the breeze, brief as it is,

rippling across the shroud of green leaves

over the ravine, on this sun brightened day,

in my Beacon Hill neighborhood,

where life is idle,

and Dylan Thomas would pronounce it good.

On rainy days even, it boasts of a solitary café:

[The Station],

as in a station of the metro,

“the apparitions of these faces in a crowd”

(a small intimate crowd it is),

“petals on a wet, black, bough.”

And would it have been worth it,

to order a tea, coffee, or cocoa,

marshmallow or orange marmalade

that will take you to another level of glad?

Like a walk from the house at a fresh hour of the morn,

inclined so slightly is 18^th Avenue South,

spritely I jaunt past houses with eaves and green paint,

past shrubs manicured and the variegated roses that grace

communal pledges that we made

to rescue each from days that are sad,

as the gardens were mastered by gardeners

who measure without malice and weigh without hate.

II.

Cross Beacon Hill Avenue with me to the Red Apple,

a house of plenty on this hilltop.

Take your sums from the Wells Fargo ATM,

go inside the store and give your eyes a feast,

and remember to purchase a book of stamps,

for letters to connect with Texas and Tennessee.

Let’s now continue past the branch library,

but we will not linger now, for there is time,

time for you and time for me,

time for the hope of the woman,

even though the principle has been hijacked

by the congressional corporations.

O Ezra Pound, where are you now?

Thou were the CEO of Modernist Poetry.

Why did you take up residence at Saint Elizabeth?

Oh well we won’t go see the Muse,

and even without a single glimpse of the Muse,

the walk must go on; we shall go on. 

III.

Inside his mind was the Muse.

And she moves on, as the river;

as the water, she moves on.

Stones will not impede her.

Shameless she provides,

in the estuary,

when birds rest from their flight.

IV.

That was another time.

He was on an island most of his days,

protected from unprivileged eyes.

V.

She called for the sky,

there came the sky.

She wanted rain.

She became fertile again.

VI.

As I walk now past the bicycle shop

again on Beacon Hill Avenue,

I am of this place and of this time.

There is another coffee shop,

but I won’t mention it by name when

the streets parade by with their designations

Horton and Hinds, Spokane at the Fire Station.

This is the loneliness of a long-distance intellectual,

the prelude with the pen that can enslave

better than an interminable sentence.

VII.

De la sierra, morena
Cielito lindo vienen bajando
Un par de ojitos negros
Cielito lindo de contrabando

Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores
Porque cantando se alegran
Cielito lindo los corazones

VIII.

We do not object.

We do not object to its price.

Jin tien wo men cher fan

Wo men do shih cher fan

“In the café the women come and go,

talking of Michaelangelo.”

Jonel Abellanosa ----- Three poems

Simplicity

By Jonel Abellanosa

My return to the ordinary, ways of

Each day.  The dawn and its tints,

Tilled soil, smells waking from water.

Ephemeral.  Then I run, running like jogging

Memory, more of the same scenaries:

Posts holding wires like skipping ropes,

Songs of early birds, voices without speakers, 

Yearns for the blacks and whites of language,

Calling a tree no other name.  Future

Heart I see.  The 30-minute jog an act of

Overcoming.  Nothing will redefine all day.

Silence has learned to sit like a lotus and

Instill.  Breathing has learned to slow.

Sustenance is the fixed point that glows.

Interplanetary Caravan

By Jonel Abellanosa

                                    After Imagika Om- Cosmic Sutras

The interplanetary caravan stops by

            Drops two blues

My sacred core’s small voice exclaims

            Glass!  Glass!

The small voice of laughter replies

            Orb!  Orb!

The harpist bends the music

            And the percussionist pounds

                        A hundred centuries of sadness

            Into dust

But sadness overwhelms like laughter

            As the caravan

                                     Pulls into space

And leaves the sky

                            A floating carpet

                                    Of stars

Satori

By Jonel Abellanosa

The pianist in an uphill

Burst of energy: arpeggios

The violinist pulls

The heart’s strings

Starlings swarm their skydance

Cheetahs run till they’re bodies of light

Dolphins leap free

At music’s end

Enlightenment’s dove

And they become reflections

In teardrops

From the Buddha’s eyes

Elizabeth Myhr ---- poem

Alone I Look into You

alone I look into you because

you have the eyes that are my eyes and you have the wrists

that are my wrists that sullen bracelet we finger

I look into you because you alone know how

to play with the surface of the lake that is me

dabbling silent lightshifting music

you rise and teach me to rise and to fade

because you know that to fade is also to rise

and in my fading a long look into the mountains

you made them all didn’t you I bow to you I am

so small the slope of your body shelters our body

and you built the wild rhododendron

I would do anything for you

this love affair with death is itself a miracle

and then all night I run around making plans

but you wait laughing and when I walk out

I turn to see your face but of course there’s nothing but light

and when I fall asleep again and I fall asleep again

our separation hurts like a sword driven into a wall

but you are the sword and the wall and their separation

how can you sometimes fly off don’t you know there is

worship going on here

looking up I have to stop and stare being new to this I

must pretend I am an animal don’t all people

fall back into their animal bodies

and oh no there you are downwind the great cat waiting

your belly wet from the rain in the grass

go ahead snag me on your teeth I surrender my shaking heart

until all that’s left is blood on the leaves

no way in no way out

I’ve been trapped under ice and waiting for years

begging off in the wrong silence some kind of addict

please crack the string of ice at the creek edge

in one breath you can free everything

I might wake up confused but at least I’ll wake up

I beg you please

join me to the unbroken sand

I used to think I was alone

all those years in the shifting greenhouse

I thought I was unable to tell this story

but you never abandon anyone

not so recently the journey has

I cannot make words out of this tenderness

this beautiful descending music

rain in my half-open window

Poem ---- Jerry Austin

Within And Beyond

Ten acres to explore--my grandfather's land.

Ten more--my Uncle Ernie's adjacent land.

How can one's mind narrow while roaming

twenty acres of forest and fields, like

watching the night sky fill with its lights?

How when watching an Alligator Lizard

spiral audibly down a cedar stump the summer

has dried? I celebrated the tanager colors

of June, and wanted to retain

their fervid dance, their motions near the trunks.

Always I have longed for their river of flight

and the light-filled leaves stranding down

from the alders, the big alders, and the rare birch.

Now other lessons abound. It is as if, as one looks back

on one's life, that river of high mountains

in its descent, and revisits mistakes

one would give years of life to alter,

so it is that we look at our life from outside

our life, and find lessons as if for another's

life--a continuation of our own, or

a psyche wholly other, that differs as birch

from stone, or mountain from dream, or

time from time in another place. But the lesson

learned remains, a permanence of information.

Always I have sought the glacier beauty

because I have seen the glacier; and the rural

cicada because I'd heard its song, and the horse

snorting as he steps to the fence to take

the apple from my hand. There is a reaching

out, a desperate need to reach out from within--

one's own mind seeks it and has always sought it

though it lay hidden like the shadows of a barn

or the long shadow of a mountain.

Jerry Austin / 5 May 2015

Richa Gupta ( 16 years old from India ) poem

Five Willows Literary Review: Poetry Submission

Cascade

She had nowhere to go,

nowhere to hide

Her pockets empty, painfully empty

Horribly devoid of sustenance,

of esteem, of a will to live

She scurried away,

trying to regain what she lost

when her family left her

without leaving anything behind

She cried to the heavens

for a drop of fresh water

She pleaded to the soil

to provide her a soft bed

She implored to the trees

to give her respite from the sweltering heat

All to no avail

did she appeal to the forces of nature

So she lived a life eerily deprived of hope

Until that day… when showers of diamonds

cascaded from the sky in relentless sheets,

saving her from the thirst that

wreaked havoc on her soul

She looked in delight at the thunder clouds

as shards of lightning illuminated her path,

the path to peace, to forgiveness

With unparalleled joy did her pale eyes glitter

as she lay back, deluged by the downpour

that cooled the spiritual pain she experienced

when she thought of her parched throat, the desiccated land

her dry soul

They absorbed the water, the precious Adam’s ale

and began on the golden path to inner peace

Julie A. Dickson --- three poems

Cicada Song

Based on Aesop's Fable: The Ant and the Grasshopper [aka Cicada]

Cicada sang his constant tune

while nearby worker ants collected.

Opinion was that he neglected

winter stores, instead he crooned.

Cicada’s singing filled the air;

below ground nests were slowly filled.

Ants toiled, not one crumb was spilled;

Cicada continued without a care.

When snow covered the ground and trees,

ants nestled below with winter store,

Cicada’s feeble attempt to ask for

food, denied despite his pleas.

Solemnly Cicada admitted

his song was meant to entertain.

They never told him to refrain; 

this justification was submitted.

The colony felt collective anguish,

all summer Cicada’s symphony

in fact, eased their litany - ants

agreed to aid him, not to banish.

Then all were feasting, no one perished.

in summer, the ants would work along

with Cicada nearby, sharing his song -

at winter feast, the music cherished.

Julie A. Dickson 2014

------------------------------

Agave Spirit

Agave spirit of nectar

The cactus gives forth

Succulent refreshment

For desert dwellers

Who thirst while walking,

A quest across hot sand

Searching for water or truth.

Agave provides an oasis,

A refuge, cool repast.

Agave spirit calls.

Julie A. Dickson 2014

---------------------------------

Low Tide

The view this afternoon is peaceful

With large expanse of blue stretching out

Rocky shore uninhabited

Today I see a veritable water highway:

A freighter plodding slowly, billowing smoke

Sails moving leisurely, crisscrossing lanes

With an occasional motorboat hurrying between them

A small trawler is adrift with Miss Molly on her stern

Fishing poles upright from top beam - lines taut

Thin as etched pencil marks disappearing into the water

Miss Molly pitches in rhythm with the gentle waves

Bent over beachcombers with brightly colored pails

Collect iridescent shells and muted sea glass

A lone sunbather, legs shiny with oil

Sits atop the highest rock

Its low tide and the pools between the rocks

Are teaming with stranded fish – mouths opening

In search of the water that splashes only teasingly

Delaying the return to preferred submergence

Julie A. Dickson

Four Poems by Jerry Austin

Residence

This is a weird universe, and we can't know.

Does our conscience go on a scale at death?

This is a weird universe and we can't know.

Will DMT take us to aliens?

I doubt we're the only life in this universe.

Will DMT take us to aliens?

And does poetry make everything happen?

By which I mean, does it extend from the vital breath?

And does poetry make everything happen?

The professor told me: “It may turn out we can know.

But we just can't know that we know.”

The professor told me: “It may turn out we can know.”

The one you can never fool for long,

By whatever name, is the conscience:

The one you can never fool for long.

Jerry Austin / 22 April 2015

All Finite Things Reveal Infinitude

Was it William Bray said: "We don't

go to heaven; we are in heaven,

we just don't realize it."

I could believe that, today,

as I walked near View Ridge

Playfield--on the blocks nearby.

After rain, a half-hour of sunlight--

rare as peace--enfolded the yellow

azaleas and dense-pink flowers

of an ornamental tree. It was as if

one, without trying too hard, but simply

by not fighting it, could see into

the farther universe of things. Why

farther to see what is already there?

I don't know. But that's how it seemed.

Plain sidewalk; plain lawn, house,

park. Gardens. Rain lit with sun

on the infinite trees.

Jerry Austin / 24 April 2015

Discoveries

You may as well begin now.

                                        Life

in a year or a thousand

                                        will

be discovered

                                        outside

our solar system.

                                        Plenty

of problems--Big

                                        Problems--

will remain.

                                        But

on the beaches, wind blends

                                        magic

and a hushing, while the

                                        waves

roll like clocks

                                        readjusted

to a better-sounding tick and

                                        tock--

a music you have known

                                        far

away in your neurons

                                        all

this time. The universality,

                                        inevitability,

and organization of life will

                                        restore

knowledge of God.

                                        However

new dangers arise always from

                                        discoveries

(and here I wanted to comfort,

                                        but

have sworn to sincerity).

                                         Still

our center, a Paradise

                                        regained,

will in part be with us.

Jerry Austin / 18 April 2015

Dark Patch

Beavers had gnawed and worked

the timber that high valley, and left

a flat landscape our trail now ascended

past. Old now, older than some tall

trees.... Dark niches that scare me

do not surprise, but what much-spooked

in youth, radiated darker energies

and salience takes me back, back far

as Roethke's crow, or elders'

visionary tellings. A shudder

black-rose-black vibrated all

throughout my butterflywinged

wildscapes within, and far within,

where shared visions of unknown

ancestors and theirs much-conjure,

much-raise. Yes, I remember green

black forest on land flat as a beaver's

tail, and toothpick trees, thin as

skinny people, storks' legs, bamboo,

that didn't split the dark but furthered

thesterness, its tales of all the skies

to have passed overtop, while owls and

golden little birds in their seasons

raced to ungloom its niches.

Jerry Austin / 19 January 2015