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Lazarus

“Why, without pity on these studious ghosts,
do you come dripping in your hair from sleep?” – Wallace Stevens

Whenever you come back – wet and streaming
so that I always wonder where it is you’ve been,
I can’t work out whether it’s that I’m dreaming
or you’ve found a return path from the unseen.

Whichever it is, it only exists between REM sleep
and returning to the inextricable abyss of waking.
Whenever I’m pulled or extracted from that deep,
I’m back in a protracted abyss of my own making.

Where you only live on because “energy isn’t lost”,
as if consolation could come from that futile ghost.

.

Adam Lee lives and works as a bid writer in Manchester. Over the years he has studied 18th c. English Literature, Psychology and History. His poetry is largely concerned with time, death, loss, resurrection and renewal.

Don’t Forget Why You Came

We know we’re in deep, sweet summer
when thoughts of its end come to hand.
The first corn for sale appears at
the roadside stand, fresh-picked ears heavy
in their moist leaves. In ditches, galaxies
of Queen Anne’s Lace newly spin,
fields so radiant you’d think the sun was
green. Above it all, vast white billows
froth the sky’s sea. The earth’s expansive,
far away from winter. How often I’ve
avoided grief by not admitting to
myself some ending. July is half-gone,
yet completely present. Just set aside all
thoughts of not being here. We weren’t born
to remain in the shadows of absence
and loss, but to carry our light, this one
light as far as we can into our days.

Thomas R. Smith lives in Wisconsin, USA, and have seven published collections so far, and was included in Diamond Cutters, edited by Jay Ramsay and Andrew Harvey. He has also edited several books, most recently Airmail, the correspondence of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer, published in the UK by Bloodaxe. Windy Day at Kabekona: New and Selected Prose Poems was published in 2018. His first prose book, Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival, is forthcoming from Folded Word Press in 2020.

E.’s Portrait

Easeled for all to admire
(we all knew what it meant)

in that frame she sat looking at a point
neither happy nor sad

who was this woman so still—
she could be anyone

yet E is still here and sits
in her corner overlooking Corbett’s Glen

everything distilled to the same measure—
names, connections,

unconditional care without an answering smile
family could arrange and speak to her but

her eyes hold a final gaze, a change of focus—
wishful

as if she needed a place
to reach before nightfall.

.

Reclamation

A stretch of river he paddles
smothers from impenetrable vines
spiky buds of the invasive hops stare
from the brisling mats of leaves
hungry alien intruders
ravage, over run
steal sun, suffocate, shroud
saplings and wildflowers
with dense tangles. Turbulent

flood waters thrust
into the dense plumage
with violent twists, wrench
the miscreant from the banks
there lays bare a pristine meadow
disrobed of a weighted corset
she gasps
catches her breath
from shock of sun
sparkles in her wet dirt, saplings emerge
with curious caution
dance with daisy fleabane,
ragwort, lush grass
depleted deer tread lightly
on her floral spring frock.

.

Barbara Leonhard is a writer, poet, and blogger at Extraordinary Sunshine Weaver.  Her podcast Poetry: The Memoir of the Soul explores universal themes such as Grief, Kindness, and Presence. She taught writing for many years at the University of Missouri and is the author of Discoveries in Academic Writing. She is also a regular contributor to Free Verse Revolution, Phoebe, MD:Medicine + Poetry , and Go Dog Go Café.

Poetry Blog: extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog
Poetry Podcast: meelosmom.podbean.com

What’s Requisite

What’s requisite
is water

and some shade
moving to

a time as slow
as roots

along a stream
where trout

swim slowly
in a dream

of knowing
not caught

but foreseen.

.

Michael Seeger lives with his lovely wife, Catherine, and still-precocious 16 year-old daughter, Jenetta, in a house with a magnificent Maine Coon (Jill) and two high-spirited Chihuahuas (Coco and Blue). He is an educator (like his wife) residing in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs, California. Some of his poems have appeared recently either published or included in print anthologies like the Lummox Press, Better Than Starbucks, and The Literary Hatchet.

Attend, attend

Attend, attend, pay attention, contemplate.
Open eyes of faith to days, minutes,
moments of miracle and marvel; there is wildness
and wonder wherever you go, present
in moments that never repeat, running free,
never coming again. Savour, savour the present –
small things, dull moments, dry prayers –
sacraments of presence, sense of wonder,
daily divine depth in the here and now.
There’s only here, there’s only now,
these are the days, this is the fiery vision,
awe and wildness, miracle and flame. Take off
your shoes, stand in the holy fire; sacrament
of the burning, always consumed, never repeating
present moment, knowing the time is now.

.

Jonathan Evens is Associate Vicar for HeartEdge at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Through HeartEdge, a network of churches, he encourages congregations to engage with culture, compassion and commerce. He writes on the Arts for a range of publications including Artlyst, ArtWay and Church Times. He is co-author of ‘The Secret Chord,’ an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief. He blogs at Between: https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/

Lead, Lights

Heading home, I rode my bicycle along
one of the fields of childhood at dusk,
gazing over fenced-in, knee-high wheat
at the lights of the Benson farm, and felt

something like a hidden immensity
rise within and beyond myself, at once
both yearning and fulfillment. Now
I wonder if such visitations

are only limited neuronal
explosions, fully measurable,
entirely explainable,
just the brain’s occasional

beautiful fireworks, streamers
of colored lights doomed
to fade to black. But here’s
a star on the wooded horizon,

and another, and my wheeling
heart persists, as if light from
a distant house, any
bright star slowly rising
might still lead it home.

.

F.W. “Skip” Renker has recent poems in Presence, Leaping Clear, and The Awakenings Review.  His poems have appeared in numerous journals as well as the Atlanta Review, Poetry Midwest, and Passages North anthologies, and he has a Pushcart Nomination.  His books are Birds of Passage (Delta Press), Sifting the Visible (Mayapple Press), and Bearing the Cast (St. Julian Press).  He lives with his wife Julia Fogarty in the beautiful lakefront town of Petoskey, MI.

FROM THE SUMMIT

You could take it in your arms –
so intimate, this silence
settling through the evening air.
It rises from enshrouded valleys
over long ridges shrouded thick
with trees, fills every space between
the mountains, turning the light
to haze, sound to almost nothing.

It is as if the circling hills
linked arms around you, from
coastline through the inland ranges
back toward the bay. Their colours
softening with the last pink sun
before they all subside beneath
the billowed covering of dark.

.

Tony Lucas has lived and worked in inner South London for many years.   Hs work has been published both in the UK and America, with the most recent collection of his work, Unsettled Accounts, issued by Stairwell Books in 2015.

That Something

Something inobvious hovers
about the memories of dearly departed
grandpas and grandmas, uncles and aunts,
moms, dads, brothers and sisters,
something scarcely known
suffusing all that loss like sunlight’s
slant through stained glass windows.

Into that something pain transforms.
From that something solace flows:
kinship like a river winding
that joins the family to one.

High, deep and wide surrounding,
yet elusive to the touch,
a wordless poem, a soundless song,
promise without any object.

Something we wear, eat, make love to.
Something like wind fresh at our backs.
Something like you behind this veil
whose willing breath sustains me.

Not quite mystery. Not quite joy.
Almost a home where all abide.
A dream fulfilling. Clearing skies.
Something we die for to attain.

.

Darrell Petska‘s poetry has appeared in journals such as Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Star 82 Review, Clementine Unbound, and After the Pause (see conservancies.wordpress.com). He’s tallied thirty years on the academic staff at University of Wisconsin-Madison, 40 years as a father (seven years a grandfather), and longer still as a husband.