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Snapshots March 17, 2005
returning snow
falls silently all night
huge flakes
& gentle swathe
an ancient woodcut
sharply etched
white on dark branches
or carpeting (again
smoothing over potholes
someone already curses
Douglas Barbour
Edmonton March 16-17 2005
***
Crocus stalks here
swording up
through wherever
there's no snow.
Gerald Schwartz
***
Unread Poems
I wonder of this
cinema behind our eyes-
its composition
and inaudible
symphony, its chords?...
You and I have had
our crucial moments
What is different now?
The petite morte
and all the silence, suffered
by the hands of lovers -
all those unread poems
that fed us with beautiful words
The poems that dared
to breathe us into their souls
and asked us what color
we dream in, if we were
to dream?
What is it we truly desire?
Could you and I erase
those slow successive deaths
and learn to love - to live?
Would we be
forever changed
by writing ourselves
awake ?
Deborah Russell
03-16-05
Fort Collins, Co
***
the irish
our flock has been well
scattered. we return for these
blessings, gathered once more
old airs from seven-tongued nation
sce/ala grown long into night
scealai/ are the bearers of news; sce/ala are the stories.
an accompanying photo is available at:
http://deborahsc.blogs.com/photos/danta/lafeilepadraig.html
Deborah Humphreys
Newark, NJ
Celebrating St. Patrick's Day Parade, March 20th 12:30 pm St. Patrick's Pro
Cathedral,
Washington Street
***
Handle Shop. A shop with nothing but handles and knobs. Cabinets, windows,
drawers, doors inside, outside. The handle metaphor. What is the handle
metaphor? To get the hand on something. To grip a grip. To get a hold. To
open. To open part way. To open full. To close. To close lightly. Softly.
Firmly. The situation in which one takes out part of onešs goods. Onešs
clothing. Onešs dishes. Onešs tools. The storage held in preparation. To
clothe. To eat. To join. To work:
The handle in. The handle out. Or larger yet. To hold on. To make a
temporary hold. To hold oneself, onešs family, onešs people in place. Or,
the contrary. To steal someonešs handle. To hold them up. To break their
grip. Their time.
Can you handle it? Itšs too hot. Too cold. Too sticky. Too off-putting. A
waste of time. To handle. Can you handle him? Can you handle her?
Whošs got the handle? Whošs going to get a handle? Handle this. Handle that.
A big dark shade. A thin silver handle. The moon. Last night. What a mother.
What a father. What a dream. The metal. Aluminum. Paint it black. Paint it
silver. The moon again. Handle. Lots of luck.
Stephen Vincent
***
pleasure--
your ears feeding
on my lips
now and then
a kiss
interposing
like a parenthesis
between our
semicircled arms
enclosing
all
Gerald Schwartz
8:40 a.m./16 March 2005/West Irondequoit/New York/USA
***
Snap
The one on the right must have said something really funny, because the one
in the middle is looking at her with a kind of surprise, open-faced,
enjoying a little wickedness - I mean, the one on the right is NOT looking
at the one in the middle. She's looking at the money she's tucking into her
purse.
And, if you look carefully, you'll see that the one in the middle has some
dosh too.
The one on the left is REALLY annoyed and apparently more than a little
embarrassed. Her face is more than 20 degrees to the horizontal and going
down. She's doing something with her hands. Counting money perhaps? And she
is trying to hold in her amusement.
Whatever has been said, it has some bite to it. A truth they joy in but will
not admit to has been named. Or so I guess.
All are smartly-dressed in new, clean and poorly-tailored clothes.
Lawrence Upton
***
Ghazal
A woman's body makes me feel at home.
This room in which I sleep is not a home.
They danced and where they danced erected walls.
The music stopped, the walls fell, but not the home.
She wanted a divorce. He wanted kids.
They lived inside their fighting like a home.
The stars alone bore witness to his leaving:
footprints, cricket song-bricks to build a home.
I craft this form with words to make a poem.
Each couplet is a roofbeam of my home.
Raindrops caught on a spider's web glisten.
Without light, there cannot be a home.
Richard Newman
***
At the Horologistsš
[Canterbury Road, Canterbury &
Malvern Road, Malvern]
1
At both the rule seems:
for older bigger clocks
bigger bucks.
The cases for grandfather clocks,
some with glass in front, seem
suddenly coffins: in some
the late metal persons still stand,
bare shanks shining;
yet that pendulous donger
therešs doggčd life tick-tocking;
above on the time-worn
face, febrile hands
fidget at tattooed roman
numerals; others await
the kindly resurrectionist;
hešs out the back whistling,
fixing bones and body parts,
coaxing ticking in old hearts.
2
The granddaddy of them all,
made an age ago in Scotland,
has branded on its forehead
Robert Burns, rosy still,
a young father Time
still in his prime.
Knowing what made him tick
for the sake of his ticker,
could I put him on tick?
3
Twenty, thirty tick-tocking trickles
blend into a high-running river,
the present constantly going under.
6.30pm, Wednesday 16 March 2005
Max Richards at Cooeeš, North Balwyn
near Canterbury & Malvern (Melbourne)
***
Four Nights and Three Days in Port Fairy
1.
Arriving at dusk to a new cottage (rented
sight unseen), we spread ourselves
light-headedly, a mere couple in a place
that sleeps eight. Here for the folk festival.
Lowering blinds upstairs we look out
between grand Norfolk pines.
Both sides of the River Moyne, tall lights shine
on placid water, elegant pleasure craft
moored in two straight lines.
At dawn I walk the stone breakwater
from the moored yachts and fishing vessels
each with a steady reflection,
to where the river widens, a sign warns
Not to Make a Wash; another mentions whales.
Lines of pines, gargling song of magpies.
The dredge rests at anchor, its black-with-white-stripes
serpentine pipe curves across my path.
The ends of the two breakwaters
are manned by pairs of anglers.
Beyond, far over, the modest light-house
points east - where the cloud cover
considerately parts and first light
pours goldenly down on the sea.
One small boat buzzes quietly seaward
(no wash), passes the last speed sign,
revs loud full-power, leaving a wide track.
Whale-road without whales in March.
Names painted on a paving-stone:
John & Max. I turn back and near the park
with its battery of cannon which deterred the Tsar
from invading in the eighteen-nineties,
I try Johnšs number. Yes. theyšll come down.
2.
Folding chair dangling from your shoulder,
at the entry you must flash your wrist-band.
Lines of stalls press alternative life-styleš
products, rainbow everything, all-natural.
Guinness occupies one large tent,
a winery the other. Bigger are marquees:
Stage One, Stage Two, Stage Three,
thronged by thousands unfolding, settling.
Here the big names tune, test, are introduced,
perform. Has she ruined her voice since last time?
Has he not learned anything new to sing?
Old songs please old folkies, can they please new ones?
From ten a.m. till midnight act follows act.
Did we choose the right stage? Move on round;
stagger away, all music-ed out.
(John and wife, fresh from Rachmaninov in town -
taken in moderation - have made it down.)
3.
The beach at morning facing east is tame,
shells crunch underfoot. One angler stands
waist-deep casting forward into the swell.
One dog commands the entire beach.
Trudge to the festival, sink into onešs seat.
Coffee scorches the hand, rouses the brain.
Music courses in the blood.
Crowd-pleasers one neednšt clap.
In the smaller venues there may be
intimate music, maybe not.
In the instrument-makersš tent
the mysteries of craft: wood and string
under trained fingers combine and sing.
On the street into town, buskers busk,
fire-jugglers juggle, crowds circle.
Buskers may be pre-school, untutored,
charming the coins out of our pockets,
or choirboys: Dona nobis pacem,
backed by the Guinness tent pandemonium.
4.
Monday morningšs farewell concert:
American veteran John McCutcheon
drums jazz out of his blue-jeaned thighs;
brings on, to read a poem, his old friend,
Rita Dove (as laureate I could look down
on Congress and the Supreme Court tooš).
Her poem sings just enough to win applause.
He teaches us all an old Russian lullaby:
may there always be blue sky,
may there always be sunshine,
may there always be mama,
may there always be me.
A thousand voices raise it high.
10.45 pm, Wednesday March 16, 2005
Max Richards, home one night from Port Fairy, Victoria
***
I go into a world
Between sung skin
And unlike passions
My body is relief
Sleep not fantastic
But fine hairs
Float between tears
And a scratchy magic
Caught in the corner
Out of daylight
And the shiny rain
Jill Jones
St Leonards (on Sydney's north side), 16 March 2005
***
A slow, slow waking into
a foggy morning. In the night
I woke to the soft ticking of rain
on the windows. I am looking,
carefully, for a poem, in all the bare
branches of trees; under the stones
on the path; in the cold, low
river; in the colorless sky. In the
evening a huge crescent moon floats
above downtown, as if it had risen
from the spike on the tallest building.
Green is pushing up, from the hard
ground, through soft, composted flower
beds, through the tough skin of tree
limbs. Sunlight creeps earlier and
farther into this garden each longer day,
and as the season widens and opens,
my life narrows and thins down,
falling, to this one bud, this tiny press of
clematis, this small space, in this small
town, on this small, blue world.
Sharon Brogan
***
BRIDE
when his
mail order bride
eventually arrived
he was so
disappointed
even devastated
that she was a
self assembly
boxed flat-pack
with instructions
in cantonese mandarin.
year older patrick mcmanus
ragnarok park london
***
In my cocoon, "Well you needn't"
is followed by "Misterioso," and I remember
last week reading Petronius's droll
"Timui ego, ne me poetam vocaret."
Taking the dog poop back
to the bin this morning I noticed
one purple crocus had
assayed the air.
Flowers don't do well back there.
The weedy "Tree of Heaven," imported
by a hoary horticultural Jesuit,
poisons the soil.
The radio reaches in to say
two years ago today a Caterpiller
crushed Rachel Corrie
in the Gaza Strip, so I write
so to speak, "My Senator,"
to send the shit
(metaphorically speaking)
to Washington. Where
under the Upas dome of the Capitol
no crocus blows.
16 March 2005
Richmond, Virginia
(Note: "Ex is, qui in porticibus spatiabantur, lapides
in Eumolpum recitantem miserunt. At ille, qui plausum
ingenii sui noverat, operuit caput extraque templum
profugit. Timui ego, ne me petam vocaret." Satyricon
90. "Some of the people who were walking in the
colonnades threw stones at Eumolpus as he recited. But
he recognized this tribute to his genius, covered his
head, and fled out of the temple. I was afraid that he
would call me also a poet." (Loeb, pp. 211-13.)
David Latane
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