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Farewell from Tennyson Down

After Tennyson’s ‘Crossing the Bar’

“One day I`ll go sailing,” you`d said.
Sixteen, alone, I watched you cross the bar.
Of course, there was foam,
I hated you for it.
I felt the future cliff behind me,
fought the tide to keep you with me,
even with your withered boards,
crippled sail and splintered mast.

Now, up here on Tennyson Down a skylark calls.
I have let your ship sail out of sight, and turned
to lanes where children ride their bikes,
lizards bask and chestnuts ripen.
Chapel bells and thatched cottages evoke a time,
but this time is for living.

 

Ruth Gilchrist is an award-winning poet living in East Lothian, published in magazines and anthology. She enjoys being part of several writing groups as well as performing her pieces. Ruth writes on a variety of subjects and experiments with different poetry forms. Her joint pamphlet The Weather Looks Promising is published by Black Agnes Press.

 

On Becoming the Waves

Somewhere the waves are alive. Like an endless longing they push and pull from the vast body of blue, forward, to the sanderling—white and brown—who when the waves come, scurries away, then back to the receding water to eat from the foamy sand.

What does it mean that waves are relentless— that no matter where, no matter what they’re going through, they push and pull?

Close your eyes and think of terns. In the darkest hour imagine gulls lifting intermingled from the shore. Become waves rising, falling, behind them, knowing the worst can never stop you— reach, reach again: that glimmering shore!

 

Ahrend Torrey is a creative writing graduate from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. When he is not writing, or working in New Orleans, he enjoys the simpler things in life, like walking around City Park with his husband, Jonathan, and their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova. Forthcoming this year, his collection of poems Small Blue Harbor will be available from The Poetry Box Select imprint.

 

Saint Veronica Who is Not Mentioned in the Bible

I heard the soldiers were bringing him
up the hill past the shop, dragging
that tragedy of God-forsaken tree branches
some guys had whip-tied together
with leather straps.
I was in the back room folding linens
for a wedding we were catering later
when my daughter called me out front.
I admit, he looked rough, little rivers
of blood, maybe even tears, sliding
down his cheeks and neck.
When he tripped and fell to his knees
on the stones in front of the shop
I felt a stab a pity for him.
I handed him the cloth I was holding.
He wiped his face and gave it back.
Of course he said thank you.
His mother raised him right.
But he looked far beyond me
when he said it, like an animal in pain.
No, his face was not printed on that napkin.
People made that up after he died.
I rinsed the blood out in cold water in the sink.
I will admit the arthritis in my fingers went away
after that. And the eczema.

Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry has appeared in Florida Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Cave Wall, SWWIM Every Day and other journals. Her first book won the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award. Among other collections are The Light at the Edge of Everything and The Hours I Keep. She’s a four-time Pushcart nominee.

Furrows and Barrows

Long labours of attention dig down, heap up,
leaving furrows and barrows,
these lasting features of ideal landscapes,

and familiar legacies of centuries’ belief:
…….monuments to precepts,
…….principles that we can touch.

From a train heading north,
watch treelines where cathedral spires emerge,
cities on hills, well-weathered but still standing,

just as a quiet witness watches ancient rubrics emerge
unbidden from deep memory to treat with wild experience,
and the sudden achievement of order in an unexpected place.

 

Rory Tanner is a general-purpose writer based in eastern Ontario (Canada). He’s published a handful of essays on the poetry and politics of early modern England, and regularly reviews volumes for the Journal of Canadian Poetry. He received a PhD in English Literature from the University of Ottawa a few years ago, but has been working as a technical writer pretty much ever since. 

Why Would I Pray?

A cardinal, watching
from an oak without
judgement for who I am.

Waves that gather sunlight,
even as they relinquish it,
lapping at the shore.

Brushstrokes in the night sky,
stars calling to us
with ancient mysteries.

The secret of transformation,
an elusive quality held
within a monarch-to-be.

The celebration of life
in the color of maple
leaves, even as they die.

 

Ken Gierke started writing poetry in his forties, but found new focus when he retired.  It also gave him new perspectives, which come out in his poetry, primarily free verse and haiku.  He has been published at The Ekphrastic Review, Vita Brevis, Tuck Magazine and Eunoia Review.  His website: https://rivrvlogr.com/

Playing, Agnes Martin, 1993-1994

The gray strip under clouds plays with you
becomes darker and wider as it descends

comes on faster than you want
even though you are tired of watering the garden

want a relief from the obligation to nurture
want the rush to first snow

that will cover your faults and the heaviness
of fruit that weighed you down

brought you to your knees
still with a chance of seedlings in spring.

 

Kyle Laws read and responded to the psalms during her studies of contemplative prayer in the Benedictine tradition in monasteries in Colorado and New Mexico.  A number of the poems were published as Going into Exile, a chapbook supplement to the journal Abbey.  Other collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press), and Wildwood (Lummox Press).    

When It’s Time

for Karen

Death should not be antiseptic. It should not
smell of bleach or antibacterial soap. It should not sound
of monitors and alarms
…….and with readouts from sterile machines.

If I die in the morning, I want the smell of coffee
and waffles and of bacon sizzling in a pan. I want the
sound of overlapping voices, plates, cups and glasses clinking
with some laughing.………….and some crying.

If I die mid-day, I want the smell of mowed grass
and sunscreen and a pot roast being started. I want the
sound of children playing, adults consoling and reminiscing
and with some game or match playing on the TV.

If I die in the evening, I want the smell of bourbon,
maybe a sweet-smelling pipe, and of a bouquet of flowers
…….brought in…….from the garden that day.
I want the sounds of conversation between family and friends,
with music…………..and of doorbells announcing callers.

If I die at night, I want the sound of meditation
and prayer, with the gentle humming of intimates.
I want to be lifted up…………..while being let go,
…….and to feel the embrace and caress and breath of my love.

 

David Peterson is new to writing poetry, taking up voracious reading and now the writing of poetry during his wife’s 85 day hospitalization following a botched surgery. David a retired public school teacher and administrator who, with his super-hero wife, lives north of Phoenix.

wishes in the bottom of a well

turning, unturning
there is a moth where the light should be
and no light
i’m bleeding, this moon
is the cycle
let it ruin to rot, never turned
…..to embryo
wishes are pennies
…….we never threw
pennies are arms
……….with no hands

i couldn’t throw and the well
was empty

god doesn’t dance
…..without light
light doesn’t pray
……without solace
ballet can’t be seen
…….in the darkness

my cave is nightlit lit,
…….whisper-sweet
…….and dances alone
love can’t try to be anything other
…….than love

 

 

Mela Blust‘s work has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Isacoustic, Rust+Moth, Rhythm & Bones Lit, The Nassau Review, and more. Her debut poetry collection, Skeleton Parade, is forthcoming with Apep Publications in 2019. She  works with Animal Heart Press, a poetry reader for The Rise Up Review, and Barren Magazine.

Snowy Egret

I become a snowy egret on the beach,
staring into the choppy, translucent sea,
skinny legs swaying on each breaking wave,
sinking deeper into quickening sand,
snatching worms or insects as they fly,
nature’s rippling tide, I ride.

A brief and treacherous journey,
I participate in collectively.
A free and easy universe enabling me
in the water and the air I breathe.
With allies and predators alike,
I spend my life in the bittersweet swell.

 

Mark Tulin is a former family therapist who lives in Santa Barbara, California.  He has a poetry chapbook, Magical Yogis, published by Prolific Press (2017). He has an upcoming book of short stories entitled, The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories.  His stories and poetry have appeared in Page and Spine, smokebox, Vita Brevis, Leaves of Ink, The Drabble, among others. His website is Crow On The Wire.

 

QUIS HIC LOCUS, QUAE REGIO, QUAE MUNDI PLAGA?
from ‘Marina’, a poem by T.S. Eliot

There is an infinite aspect of our being which knows more about us than we do. Writers who converse with themselves are lights flickering in liminality. This passage urges them to progress to wholeness and safety in a world which does not proffer absolutes. Many adhere to structures like time and conventional morality. Writers will risk unhinging these to engage in introspection.

The sacred is similar to an orchestral composition whereby the accompaniments align into synchronistic harmony. This dislodges the pervious interior movement of the psyche, or the soul or even God. This can be interpreted to mean the core or true self, which desires us to stretch or fan its natural and relational potential like the splayed branches of a tree.

Writing is a dialog with this Self which challenges the false self or the constructed ego. Wholeness begins to form when contact has been made with the sacred. The ego functions instrumentally rather than as an obstruction and the Self rises like the string or umbilical cord of a kite in the wind.

Writing is a reconciliation of tensions beneath conscious awareness, so thoughts, feelings or ideas which are initially located may assemble very differently by the end of the page. What is written can never be wrong, because what emerges spontaneously from the psyche always tines towards a purposeful direction. What we believe may be an error or a slip will be pregnant with meaning and serves as a providential knot because untwisting it reveals some aspect of our lives we were once unaware of.

Intuitive writers float between conscious and unconscious worlds. They communicate between the two realms and understand there is no fixed or finite reality. Physical reality is only a slither of what is and what our senses limit us to. The sacred world is non-spatiotemporal. It is a layered and webbed sea made of gossamer – very delicate and seemingly ephemeral.

What is under our skin remains whether we distract ourselves from it or not. It may slide under consciousness, but it will never disappear. It can only be resolved, and writing, being a personal, idiosyncratic and patient process, enables us to grasp these spiritual aspects of ourselves.

Therapeutic writing serves to bind our loosened ties to unite our own being which, in turn, can untie generations of complexes. We are not just one being but one part of a natural jigsaw. Every thought or feeling results in particular tendencies which affect others we are most closely related to. These gradually vibrate like waves radiating into the wider world. Writing is a way of catalysing the sacred in preparation for the potential of those after us.

Interacting with the world without introspection results in a dissociation from the sacred. It is like arranging the branches of a tree and realizing too late, that you have no trunk, roots or the ground to grow from.

 

Annie Blake’s research aims to exfoliate branches of psychoanalysis. She enjoys semiotics and exploring the surreal and phantasmagorical nature of unconscious material. Her work is best understood when interpreting them like dreams. She is a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne. You can visit her on annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com.au and https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009445206990.