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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