Ineffable

A water’s rhythmic murmur

Laces through our conversation,

Adorning our words,

Assuaging my ears,

Water swaying just beneath my feet—

Ancient world of support,

Grayish blue and green—

         A placid dream.

I see it arrest and flow, arrest

And flow, push and play itself

Along its way, as I watch

Through the iron wrought interstices

Of the bridge’s floor.

How you and I

Fit so snugly

In this vastness.

The water gently lapping on,

Here and after, beyond and before,

To the far blue mountains borne—

A misty promise in the near horizon—

Under a crystalline white winter sky!

Here, where the Earth

Is not too great

To listen to our voice.

                                            —Catharine Otto

Harmony

I am startled by the bird’s rufous breast,

landing to perch on a branch of the winter maple—

its brown-red color

in contrast to the bark grey and the white on white

against the drifted February fields and the meadows,

beyond.

The bird pivoted on the limb, its

bright black eyes looked into me through the window:

I sat mesmerized by its

presence, that seemed out of place in the frigid cold—

making me think it must have been overwintering; but

before this thought concluded—

the bird flew up, displaying its chalk-

blue feathers, their shade being that of an elegant shawl

covering its wings.

Then the bird dipped, hovering in front of the window,

seeking entry, to come close enough

to the glass that it electrified the sensation of my skin;

since, in its singularly

divine way, it touched me; and became more than just

a mere bluebird,

communicating to me through the harmony of nature,

before flying off in a dazzling rush

of blue, leaving the grace of its visitation in the trace

of its proximity

that I felt had grazed my skin, and brushed my viscera;

affording me with the sight of its fluttering wings that

continue to beat within.

                                                    —Wally Swist

 Is it Spring?

by Mindy Aber Barad, Drora Matlovsky & Ruth Fogelman

            I

 M.: Is it spring?

Not by definition, no

But simply by the warmth

Of the stones

Beneath my feet

R.: Simply by the warmth

On my face

Simply by the scented breeze

Plum blossom and almond

I know that spring will soon be here

D.: Simply by the warmth on my face,

In my heart,

I know life is here,

Waiting to burst forth from all sides.

M.: On my face

Scented breeze of blossoms

Gently nudges spring

Ever closer

Although the clouds

Seem to threaten

            II

R.: Is it spring?

The sun is out

Light clouds in sky

Overcoats left on hooks

Will the layers of winter remain unworn?

D.: Overcoats left on hooks

Ignore the clouds!

Off to somewhere green,

Somewhere warm

Somewhere happy.

M.: Somewhere green

Is where spring hides

Watching through the filtering clouds

Waiting.

R.: Waiting to burst

Back, again,

Waiting for sun’s rays

To warm the Earth,

Warm the roots of the trees,

Warm life into rebirth.

            III

D.: Is it winter? Is it spring?

I am cold and the birds sing

Let’s put the heater on, my heart sings

I don’t know where I am

The clouds, the sun

M.: The birds sing

I’ve heard them twitter

First soggy

In a drizzle,

Now warmed

By their own symphony

R.: Trees carry a symphony

Though most branches are still bare

So few leaves for the wind to rustle

Only a week ago I saw the golden leaves

Underfoot

D.: Few leaves for wind to rustle

Where does the music come from?

Is there some unseen instrument?

Do the trees sing

The song of spring?

 * 

Angel seeds

The cottonwood tree sets free its angels,

its seeds that swirl like stray thoughts

in the wind’s memory, astonish the light,

involve the sun, and bind us to beginnings.

They come in white shrouds over the town.

They seem to sleepwalk through the air.

They come like stars seeking new worlds.

They come to become themselves.

Some blanket the cars, some sway the winds.

Some blow in questions to the moon.

Some land in graveyards which yield and forgive.

They blow wherever the silence leads them.

They burst through the gaping doors of the grocery,

whispering alien voices down the aisles,

tempting the shoppers with their Winter in Spring,

to their land where all hunger ends.

Outside, in the gardens, they seek their

second life, whirling, yearning to cling deep

where stillness and darkness answer their cries,

and heaven, rooted, ripens into earth.

                                                                       —Sean Lause

Lover of Summer

I have a summer afternoon off

how do I tell those concerned

that I want to dip into the stillness like a pool

touch the trembling of my Rose of Sharon

and a wayward plump bee under my chin

confused by my bright t-shirt glow

My neighbor’s cat naps under the hemlocks

I didn’t know

tree tops hustle importantly

sensing a  season change

flowers are grown, the goldfinch and sunflower are one

and I have won a skirmish of love to be alone

I am a child of summer

once a mighty swimmer, never a splasher

but my arms were always open to the sky and sea

now like the cat I dream in dark green

lick the sun like a bee, warm myself in memory

and as a lover of summer, I dive into this afternoon.

                                                                                              —Susan Oleferuk

The Blowing Swale

For a quarter mile the blue and white of lily-of-the-valley

burned the air with a spray of fragrance beyond sweetness.

Maybe that is what clouded my head, or perhaps it was just

the blue-sky eternity of the day that seemed to make me float,

when I saw the sherbet-colored petals of purple-flowering

raspberry, growing in the waving grasses in the Petersham

woods, on the north shore of Quabbin.  I decided to point

out the flower to my friend; and as I was about to place one

of my boots into the blowing swale, I stopped short, and

we saw the length of it moving incrementally in an opening

of the blades of grass before the tilting flower.

Its scales were designed with bronzed diamonds juxtaposed

against a dark background, which indicate more

than a single possibility; but in that instant my life teetered,

as I held my foot in the air, withdrawing it as slowly as

the snake slithered through the grass. 

My friend and I looked at the thickness of its body, and then

each other, mouths agape,

the astonishment on our faces replicated by the fear that raged,

separately, in her solar plexus and mine—

and since we never saw either the snake’s head or the tail,

I could never verify what it was.

Although, what I remember is how the body kept flowing on

before we decided it best to walk quietly away, with gratitude. 

                                                                                                                           —Wally Swist

Refugees

The weeds on the trail were tall and I accidentally

fell into the herd

startled they were lined up big and summer old

staring at me

I knew my place and lowered my eyes and turned

They belonged in the woods , they belonged on the earth,

they belonged with Egyptian kohl eyes, African necks meant to reach the free skies 

and the warm brown of slim trees

in Northern summer

And I, I was running for my life

 so  lost

bulldozed

by the sounds and heavy steps of mankind. 

                                                                              —Susan Oleferuk

[fallen leaf]

Shaking off all the dust

You have accumulated over the season

Flapping your wings against twilight

At the border of night

Like a butterfly coming down to

Kiss the land

As if to listen to

The heartbeat of the earth

Only once in a lifetime

                                                   —Changming Yuan

IT IS IN THE NATURE OF THINGS

*

It is in the nature of things to want

to fly, as a bird will fly, toward light

on water; to chase, as would a child,

a shadow that escapes you—any wild

elusive shadow; to wonder, in later years,

about the self and how long that self can go

on living, or if it matters at all that it

goes on living…matters at all.

*

In the late afternoon, a wild tom turkey

makes its way through a grove of trees,

as scattered light falls here and there

on iridescent feathers—bronze, teal,

copper—burnished rose—the glorious wings,

archangelic, unfurling as he rises on his toes

to open his body to the cooling breeze.

*

It wasn’t dusk yet, but you could feel

dusk coming…(the ancient chambers

thudding inside the heart)…And I remember

how I used to rush from one disaster

to the next without the slightest notion

of what propelled my frenzy.

*

Now, it seems, I am released

into a newly stilled complacency.

My life is seemly, if not a little dull.

I am at home with myself, at home

with the darkness that falls without haste,

filled, as it is, with the inevitable. Yes,

that’s it. I am making peace with the inevitable.

                                                                                             —Constance Rowell Mastores

ASIDES AND HESITATIONS

i

I used to think the power of words

was inexhaustible, that how we said the world

was how it was, and how it would be.

I used to imagine that word-sway

and word-thunder would silence the Silence,

that words were the Word, that language

could lead us inexplicably to grace,

as though it were geographical.

ii

Deer start down from the mountains.

A hummingbird and a raven briefly perch

on the same limb of a shaggy pine—

fly off in opposite directions.

The sky speaks of autumn, or of just

before. Not much difference, really, between

what was and what is soon to be—except

in the caesura, the hesitation

between the word and the world.

Time like a swallow’s shadow cutting

across the clay, faint, darker, then faint again.

iii

The overheated vocabulary of the sun

sinks to just a few syllables, fewer

than yesterday, fewer still tomorrow.

In wingbeats the disappeared come back

to us. The soul returns to the tree.

                                                               — Constance Rowell Mastores