Poetry

To call you the Creative Champion of the Arts Would be an achievement befitting you As a librarian An advocate and as a friend To think your impact as meaningful Would be calling a rainbow only slightly attractive Walking by seeing the gallery I couldn't picture the space without it To see and hear the poets you brought here Is like tasting fine wine in Paris As Charlie wondered As we do what life is all about The depth and breadth of their work refreshing the dull landscape we knew. To know you as a friend Is something I cherish Like E. B White's Wilbur and Charlotte Rare is it to find a friend and a fellow writer You, BestSeller, were both. - Brian Liston Larry Berk, a local poet, friend and supporter of poets, passed away on October 30, 2006. Work from his recently published The Charley Poems (Golden Notebook Press) was featured here in our January issue.

Now hail the Dawn! Celestial brightening, Where we, Nipple tenacious, Easterly greet busy seabirds, Swooping foam, Singing: "Find the fish!" "Find the fish!" Or expansion undiminished, By time's warp, Celebrating Yes! And then Yes! And then Yes! Now hail the Dawn! - Bill Vanaver

We knew it was big when Mr. McKernan went out into the hallway in the middle of class, something unheard of, and through the cracked doorway we glimpsed frantic activity. Then the knocking of the loudspeaker, as if someone were trying to get in, and at the news Susan Kennedy, seated in front of me, burst into tears, as the question hit me: was she crying for him, or because she had the same name? On the day of the mournful drumming we got bored and played outside. It was no surprise that Christopher had the idea, the one who broke into the temple, who, rumor said, took girls into the woods and got them 'bow-legged.' He found the coupon in his father's magazine, filled it out with his address, but used the assassin's oddly rhythmic name. We pooled the money and mailed it in. Three weeks later, in brown paper wrapped with string, against his front door, we found it leaning. - Al Desetta

She was arguing whether it was better to be a Democrat or a Republican, and nobody dared point out to her that she was not even American. - Kristine Ong Muslim

Would that you could meet me at the river at the confluence of yearning and the void And we bubbled stone to stone wash might flow. Our hearts know, our bodies do not. We are old now and do not have time for this: I, wan and flown wide open like a great white egret at the edge of the sea And you Glacial Truth - Connie McCormmach

Safely ashore, Boldini's catch is in: anchor planted among the clatter of rocks, the villagers crowd around, lost to the din of fishwife and monger arguing the cost of the day's live haul—conger teeming in vats we do not see, but sense, perhaps imagine, subject as we are to this Etretat composed of canvas, pigment, oil and resin awash with sea brine, mottled light that swells with the gull's far cry and an ocean's smell. - Peter Filkins

A hospital is memory you can never forget A stream racing in your mind A quiet and a busy place a the same time A place that never stops A bird that can't chirp A hospital isn't just a building It is a LIFESAVER - Claire Telfer (age 8)

Your piercing, sharp claws tear through field mice. Bones crackling like a big bomb fire. Twisting your head around like a string of pasta. Swooping through the air. Blending right in with the trees and the midnight sky. Your eyes, bright yellow, like the moon. King of the trees. - Mike Ivino (7th grade)

the pulsing embers glowing coal remembers like stone in the sun striated flickering with leaf shadow. the pines comb the wool from the wind spun threads of sky azure ruby sunrise and the muted tones of the master to form the flowers of winter feathers and the melody flies spiraling bobbin and sailing shuttle through the heddles and hedges and eyelets of tree twigs, and the clacking harnesses of the boughs waving the abstract rudiments of rhythm as this morning's tapestry of bird voice unfurls. the water resists the clutching cold twisting away from its hardening grasp to flow deeper into the village past and we look into the still frame to see the character of a stream as we first felt its entraining our breath and our center permeating the air and sunlight; as we walk further into these verses we lose what has come before like imaginary gardens and unrealized orchards among the rambling walls of the mountainside where parallel lives divided. the farmer is out early understanding the day throwing feed to chickens in his sleep staring out where the sun will rise and the stream returns somewhere far away, speaking a different language. - Scott Hanna