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

"Other" ------ poem by Nathaniel Hutner

Other

You will use my madness

To give me pain – you,

Who speak in the guise of truth

And wish me ill.

Have I not pain enough

For the ten of you, or twenty?

Can you really be invulnerable?

You have given the gift of my faults.

I have already lived with them,

They know me,

And I have made them my friends.

It is as if I lived with them

On a small island and we passed

Our time shifting places.

I am now all that I have been

And shall be,

History and potentiality.

My faults cannot destroy me.

Nor my madness.

Nor you.

Nathaniel C. Hutner

First published in Chrysanthemum, Spring/Summer 1992

Two poems ----- Joseph Riccardi

EPITAPH

No longer to eat this bread of Earth,

Will I taste a richer bread,

Will I sit again at someone's board

Or will stones remain my bed?

So traveler, pass on --

And if your bread is poor,

Be thankful you can curse at it,

And pound on the baker's door!

POVERTY

Poverty is a black kid

bouncing on a box spring

put out for the garbage --

but now a trampoline!

Poverty is looking for coins

under the sofa cushions,

fallen from pockets

to buy bread and milk!

Poverty is ten kids

climbing over a truck

marked "Good Humor" --

buying half of an ice pop!

Poverty is a toothache

and you with no dentist

to relieve the pain,

and you with no mother!

Poverty's a saxophone

you have to conceal

as you run home

from band practice!

Poverty's having no legs

and you on a roller

plunking the banjo,

while begging for money!

Poverty's never putting

your rippling muscles

to useful endeavor,

but only to harming!

Joel Kabakov -------- Five Poems

Night Singer
(for O.T.)

I saw the full moon take a last sip of ocean
wipe her lip on a cloud
and slink down an elliptical alley
our marooned throats parched at the thought of squinting
at the light of day
as the shadows long and regal before her imperious stare
now decayed into high-contrast artificiality
frogs and crickets fallen silent
speechless along with the whole backside of the planet
diurnal fools began shuffling from desk to desk
clutching cases crammed with sobriety
While after dawn
I hang out at her favorite bar
patiently
wings folded
waiting to sing.


Mirage

This love that our glance created
is but a distant mirage
a mirage in the desert
keeping life’s waters
eternally beyond reach
as if knowing that thirst sustains love
the absence of quenching
of final attainment
the suffering root
the branch
a blossom’s fragrance
all reaching
for that hint of heavenly dew
to arrive
just before
the moment of extinction.


Ask Me

We now learn that matter in the universe is aligned
in a grid,
that each molecule knows its mark
as if order came first
that the stars know the moment of our birth
as if knowledge came first
that each canvas knows what it wants to become
as if image came first
that the tiger knows when to strike
as if power came first
that prayer is answered
as if God came first
and as all systems fail
all gods flee
all stars fall
and as knowledge is overrun by innocence
something else comes into being
Ask me.


Columbia Crossing

Riotous wild flowers defy
the vandal winds of noon
a ruler of skies and river
retracts his wings
careening
talons outstretched
into the rapids below the dam
I watch and conjugate “ I am” in several dead languages
may the tongues whose words for the movement of water
the finite expressions for the consistency of snow
and the constancy of love
may poesy that long ago ceased its harmonious continuum
when the river stopped
cry out in counterpoint with the rapids again
we walk among the blossoms and the driftwood bereft of literacy
as scriptures encode themselves
in the pagination of windblown silts
respelling the gorge through millennia.


Available Light

Aimless
I straddle her doorway
phantom quiet
she greets me
“there’s a switch on the wall
behind you and a little to the right”
she says
“but remember
I live by available light”
she says
Emptied
my dark pocket disgorges its dried fruit
its seeds
“I suspected you of coming to share your needs”
she says
“but when the sun abdicates its window above
certain species are available for love”
“now take my hand
think to me
there is an available link to me
not in gravity
not in jest
nor time escaping in your chest
copperite moons upon the moat
not scripture
nor what patient prelates wrote”
Belong,
“belong to none and no one
nor to me”
she says
“I’m available
available but free.”

Anne McWilliams ----- Two poems

REFINISHING A BOAT IN MORGAN'S GARAGE

(rebuilding a vehicle, repairing anything)

They huddle together,

dozens of squashed cans spilling

from bad bank shots around a recycle bin

full of smashed Budweiser boxes.

Urine musk rises from the gravel

between the house and RV

near the dumpster full of rotted deck wood

(or bad parts).

Their boxer sniffs the ground

and adds his scent.

The women hold cigarettes

that burn down between their fingers

while the men pass a pipe

and shatter the air with farts.

This is where,

every spare moment,

among the tools and cast off chairs,

they hold communion.

POKER FACE

she bends a straw to your lips,

props your pillows

brings warm blankets,

and after a short while she brings

another dose of pills

and takes an empty glass away.

she's neat and orderly

tired and overworked

and has seen thousands of naked men.

don't ask her out, ever.

somebody's mother or daughter

she doesn't wait for gratitude

she keeps smiling and scrubs you clean

wipes your wounds and backside

and asks if everything is ok.

she doesn't inflict bodily harm

genetics will out, and no amount of care

can make up for poor choices.

dead or dying, in flames,

frozen, drowning, train wrecks

she works in common cause to clean

care and teach with calm

eyes, serene face, steady hands.

she gives no salt for your wounds

released, rebalanced, prescribed

graves dug, again, and again

she knows it never changes.

she learns the smell of dying souls.

she knows the body contains so much blood.

she wants you to believe in the power of healing

or whatever lies you believe

to show in her face, she knows exactly

what quality of your life

is up to you.

Julie A. Dickson ----- Five poems

 

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The Wise Man Bridge

 

I’d heard about a bridge from the time I was a girl.

I’d rarely gone to investigate the rumors people shared.

Countless travelers told tales that, while crossing, heard a voice.

They spoke of hearing a wise man who offered direction to the lost.

 

Weary travelers who came to town called it The Wise Man Bridge.

Local men scoffed and laughed; kerchiefed women whispered,

but I had always been afraid, had chosen to stay away

until the day my papa died when I felt lost and alone.

 

As I approached the bridge, I heard nothing, I stopped.

Soon there came a whisper, “Why have you not come before?”

I shuddered and stood quietly. “You know what to do.”

I nodded and a peaceful calm fell over me.

 

I thought I recognized the voice and then knew it was my own.

My voice within had spoken; the travelers had not listened.

As others before had walked upon The Wise Man Bridge,

I had been afraid to listen to my own wisdom.

 

 

 

 

Pomaceous

 

Pomaceous orbs glisten with dew

in the morning sun, succulent morsels

shine yellow-red behind translucent leaves.

 

The clusters nestled in gnarled tree forks,

weigh down slender sapling branches

awaiting the eager hands of harvest.

 

Gather them now into your basket.

Drink in their aroma, coolly crisp;

savory apple, each snap in your mouth.

 

 

I’d Never Make You Cry

 

If I was a man, I’d wear a felted hat,

walking tall down the dark street,

a knowing glance to those I meet.

 

If I was a man, I’d have my arm around your shoulder,

proud to be seen with you,

a treasure, come real and true.

 

If I was a man, I’d never make you cry.

I’d recognize your strengths and good,

revel in your worth, I would.

 

But I’m not a man, I don’t know what it’s like

to walk in your shoes

even if I could choose,

 

I’d never make you cry.

 

A Hawk

I walk the rocky foothills through scrub pine;

above me a hawk in lazy circle soars,

repeating pattern of some grand design,

Hawk spies a salmon while river’s mouth pours

o’r stones and pebbles, loose branches they flow;

tangled, catching, break free, they travel.

Held tightly in talons, his prey in tow-

Has stirred up silt among the gravel.

Echoed sound of footsteps, path traversed,

he, solitary as my stride, the hawk.

I wander through existence well-rehearsed;

tranquility must feed me as I walk.

I feel the morning sun upon my face,

feel nurtured as within my love’s embrace.

 

 

Homeless: No Purpose

 

Drifting along a deserted sidewalk,

hearing a song from the corner café.

Passed by open door - hear strangers talk,

icy glances, their chosen whispers say.

No one looks my way, in my direction;

anonymous, continue to survive.

I walk alone, passed by- with no objection,

 

As if I have no purpose to be alive.