I. Seasoned

 

PEOPLE WALKING IN THE SNOW

 

People are walking in the snow

In Sacher Park,

In its snowy expanse.

In the face of the white vision

That dances before them

They smile at

The clumps of snow on the trees,

They smile at each other

As if for a minute

They were exiled from themselves

And had reached a different region,

The district of most dazzling white

Within them.

 

                             —Ruth Gilead

                               translated by Esther Cameron

 

 

Seasoned

 

1.

The nature of spring

newly alive and spreading green—

grimy winter windows whitewashed

 

to May, a sunset-breasted robin

across the yard

holds me astonished.

 

2.

You’re old,

my grandson observes,

his short history sweet-scented curls

 

that fall over leaf veins

on the backs of my hands

he traces with a stubby thumb.

 

3.

It is often on the way down I think

the sun makes my day

light’s great swill glazing hills

 

wild with the possibility

of even so—

of yet.

Ilene Millman

 

A GARDEN WHERE ONCE MY MOTHER WALKED

 

Bees burrowing deep into each flower

this late afternoon,

as if to make visible the world of things:

petal, sepal, leaf;

finely filamented anthers burdened

with hymnal hum;

a bee’s hind tibia smothered in pollen.

 

Jubilation of manyness, a busy thrum,

as she walks among

the flowers. No threats, no stings. A few

fluttery encounters.

She longs for more. More murmurous bees

humming in her hair.

More warmth of flesh paired with flower –

 

less brevity, more hours.

The bees continue to work the garden,

sipping from quince

and plum, the purpling sage. She lingers

in the dusk.

The coo, coo-coo of a morning dove blues

the air like a sorrow.

—Constance Rowell Mastores

 

 

WILD ANISE

 

A wild anise that grows on the slope

outside my window slowly merges

into a featureless forgetting,

a mythic world that does not hold

its shape. I close my eyes, drift

away, lose sight of leaf and flower.

 

Startled from a dream, I wake,

gaze upon a structured world

of cedar, redwood, pine.

The wild anise on the darkened

slope recomposes, comes alive:

Toothed leaves. Clusters of small

white flowers. Stark. Bright.

Particular. Never so white as now.

—Constance Rowell Mastores

 

 

This Hour in Summer

 

White lilies lean over the soft dark grass of a summer evening

glows and hums unsettling

in this hour, in this only hour

all whispering of love and loss and desire

swift and strange as fairy lights

translucent and vertiginous the milky swarm of stars

the purplish shadows of the past lurking through the trees

spilling like a dark hood

this hour gives one more moment with the moon lending her light

and the ghostly forms of flowers close their mouths and bend and pray

in the crying mists

and creatures fly their fantastic ways

and we leave to restless lives

such is this hour

if you follow it

in summer.

—Susan Oleferuk

 

 

 

Hydrangea

 

 These deciduous plants adorn

the lawns on which they lavish panicles,

 

large white flowerheads, growing

among spear-shaped evergreen leaves.

 

The bushes are as showy as their flowers

that are often thought

 

to resemble pom—poms.

Every spring and summer, I observe

 

their enormous blossoms bob among

their greenery as if noticing

 

someone one hasn’t seen for however long

and whose name is momentarily gone,

 

as I forget their names every season.

The flowers bloom steadily through

 

midsummer into August lushness,

then begin their pink

 

blush in the late summer coolness

among the first harbingers

 

of the frosts of autumn.

Each year the flowers are dried and sold

 

on roadside stands to celebrate the turning

of the great wheel of summer.

 

And each year I finally remember, then forget

until next season, when the hydrangea

 

bloom so whitely, while my memory slips

away ever so much from year to year, until

 

it maybe lapses entirely:

Hydrangea, may I remember your name,

 

as I might inhale your spicy fragrance;

may I recall in winter

 

the murmur of your petals

whispering on the summer wind.

—Wally Swist

 

 

The last water lily

 

The last water lily

 of the fall butters

a browning pond,

 

a single gold fish

fell asleep beneath

the shrinking sun spot,

 

two morning glories clamber

into the noon hour of this—

their last day,

and their first.

—Vera Schwarcz

 

 

CASCADE

Seen on a night in November

 

How frail

above the bulk

of crashing water hangs,

autumnal, evanescent, wan,

the moon.

—Constance Rowell Mastores

 

 

NOVEMBER

 

Dark comes earlier and earlier now;

night sooner in a thick winter jacket.

 

From a nearby hillside drenched in shadow,

wild turkeys, with a great flapping

 

of wings, head back to the same old

redwood, the same old roosts. And I,

 

who only a month ago could sit outside

with a glass of wine and marvel

 

at the turkeys’ embrace of sky,

now peer through a kitchen window,

 

see no more than my face mirrored

by darkness, pale and odd, startled

 

by time. And I, who only wished to be

looking out, must now keep looking in.

—Constance Rowell Mastores

 

 

Fox Abandon

 

Awakening to the motion

detectors going off in the barnyard

 

is not anything new

but detecting motion within those

 

parameters is, sensing

there was something more to it

 

than the feral barn cat stalking

rodents.  Raising the shade,

 

the fox must have heard me, or

seen my reflection in the window;

 

and it wasn’t as if I didn’t

have to exercise patience, knowing

 

how long the lights stay on

out there, aware that because they

 

stayed on, something slinked

in the shadows of hedge or barn.

 

When she appeared

in her regal red finery, not without

 

decorum, her tail nearly as long

as she was; the whimsical,

 

wry smile; the ears perked;

her exquisite gait that of a dancer,

 

her legs and feet propelling her

smoothly across the ground

 

in more of a glide than a trot

or a brisk bound, as she ran to

 

the peaked shadows

and between them, darting from

 

one point to another, possibly

running down a mouse, before

 

cavorting into the winter grass

north of the barn, the brilliance of

 

her coat catching different tones

of color, from a glistening blonde

 

to a wizened fox red, in the glare

of the spotlights, as she

 

eventually sprinted into

the darkness several hours before

 

the early spring dawn, which

would break over the ridge

 

she must have tracked over

by then, igniting the full palette

 

of her coat, as if she

had dragged it behind her across

 

the hills, and it caught on

the edge of the treeline, lighting up

 

the edge of the sky with a color

as bright as her quickness.

—Wally Swist

 

 

Seven Stages of Drought

 

the drought was worse than any that came before it

or, does memory elongate it like summer shadows?

we do not speak of it

though between us words hang as heavy as over—ripe fruits straining the vine

we step carefully around them

to acknowledge them might lend them validity

in the beginning, we recall the first condition of growth

the insistent refrain of the first cell

pushes and pulls its way toward water

we do not say so

to say so might prevent it

separately, as if in private grief,

we stand vigil over the dry, cracked earth

peer down on its mute lines

as if we could decipher a forgotten language

we do not share this hope aloud

we might extinguish it

 

we grow sullen as hot wind

we think of dead things

dried shells, limp wings, empty cases fill our minds

we do not refer to them

naming them might give them power

we identify ourselves as do orphans

by what we lack  

 

when the drought finally ends we run for cover  

we run from the cool rain scented with the fragrance

of blossoms it has drenched before it reached us

we distrust the rain

as if it threatens our identity

     but in the night

     we hear it throb against the pulse of fear

     we listen until we distinguish one beat from the other

     when we recognize the heart of rain

     we embrace like old friends

 

and we are careful to speak of it

as if that will make it last

—Judy Belsky