Whale
There’s a whale in my backyard
I’ve tried to water it
But it’s not easy to reach all the places it needs
To stay hydrated
And alive
It sings a deep sad song
Sometimes so long and low
And I worry I’m the only one who hears it
It’s too big to lose
It’s presence unnerving
It’s too big to forget
Or minimize
Or plant a garden around and transform it
Into something else
“There’s a whale in my backyard”
I tell my friends
“What should I do?”
It belongs in the ocean
It belongs somewhere that cradles it
Keeps it safe
And let’s it feel free
And weightless
Where it can hide
Or rise
When it needs
“Did I trap it somehow?”
I ask them
Did I siren it here
And strand it
With promises I wasn’t capable of keeping?
There’s a whale in my backyard
And I do all I can
To keep it
—Siobhan McBride
Pond Pieces
Pond never sees own reflection.
Trees, shrubs, grass, clouds, sky and sun
hoard pond’s surface like outsiders
pushing to see the other side
through a peephole.
Wind, as a friend, shivers blurs,
and rain pockmarks the gazing
into choppy jigsaw puzzle pieces
flung out of frustration of the picture
not coming together.
Pond yearns for moonless nights
where sight is blind, and grass tickles,
startles insects into a tease,
where pond admires itself
in touch all around.
—Diane Webster
Three Stanzas
Lotus
Submerged neck-deep
Yet I smile
The smile you call a lotus
Consciousness
Consciousness too is addiction
Addiction too is pain
Staying conscious all the time
What utter pain
Only an addict knows
Gladness and Sadness
Sadness is my breath
Gladness is my smile
Smiles do have types
Breath is beyond types
—Guna Moran
(Original Assamese poem titled “Tinita Stavak”)
Tr. Nirendra Nath Thakuria
Sonnet Looking for Utopia
What would it take to craft a government
that met the needs of everyone? A feat
to challenge gods, who might decide to send
the ablest members of their kin to meet,
assess the vagaries of politics
with us until we’d crafted something real,
not conjured like a slick magician’s trick,
with language so compelling we would feel
the majesty of what we’d built, a place
where being just and true was more than words,
where no one felt left out because of race
or creed, where all our voices would be heard.
A nation none have known except in sleep,
where visions oft reflect the hopes we keep.
—William J. Joel
At Eighty-Seven
He’d still strap on his old Gibson guitar,
pluck at the strings with wrinkled fingers,
sing in a deep cackle; the words he strained to
remember.
God and the devil,
good women and bad,
barrooms and churches,
poverty and penance—
the same old same old
and always in G.
—John Grey
Waking
Outside the body, all things are encumbrances —
Charles Wright
I hear a grinding sound
Mechanical, irregular.
The sound of something breaking.
I dreamt I’d discarded an old anatomy poster.
It got caught up in the shafts
and pulleys of a conveyer belt.
The wheels jammed.
Electric arcs stabbed the air, sparked
and coalesced. Paper. Metal.
The fire consumed it all.
J. sends more explicit emails these days.
Describes the fatigue, the experimental
treatments.
He is also preparing his will.
He reports he is happy
—maybe content is the better word—
with his lawyer. He is content.
At the last: He Does Not Covet.
We’re down to the last
of the suet and birdseed.
Perfect timing
for this changing season.
We can leave the birds
(to God or) to their own devices
Now.
It is a good time
to replace thick sweaters with lighter ones.
Adjust the clock
and replace the hours with lighter ones.
Discuss lighter topics. Eat lighter meals.
Outside the body, all things are encumbrances.
Except for the body, all things have weight.
—Hannah Brooks
We Only Hear the Silence
On the first day of winter, we take our puffer
coats and boots packed with plastic bags from
the grocer down to the creek. It is frozen over,
surrounded by a soft snow that fell simply
while we slept. As the other kids graze their
gloved hands across the glittering white, I
think about last spring — how this creek,
rippled with water then, called a boy not much
younger than me to it, drowned him in its
shallow mouth. I think, maybe he is still here,
pounding the underside of ice with his small
fist, asking this new season for a second chance.
—Samantha Spoto
I Will Take A Walk Today
I will take a walk today.
It will be a difficult walk.
The day ends at a loss
about how to describe the day.
Ecological succession at
Stewart State Forest:
Woodlands of maple, oak, elm,
shagbark hickory,
hophornbeam.
Fields of indian hemp,
dogwood, buckthorn,
bitter dock. Black seeded
plantain, cinquefoil,
multiflora rose, bird vetch,
field pennycress, bull
thistle, greater celandine.
Autumn olive bush in full springtime bloom,
common comfrey, brome,
germander speedwell,
wingstem, sensitive fern.
The poet was succinct and to the point:
“taking/the field by force.”
Everywhere is troubled.
There’s protest upon
this land. Raw protest.
—Steve Clark
Sorrows of Willows
Rain drums somber songs.
Willows listen getting ready
to weep.
Roots soak up flood
for late night tears.
Wispy green appears,
branches hang low,
Inconsolable.
—Jerrice J. Baptiste
Allowing Myself to Be Bored
I experience
a moment
of boredom,
and wonder
what to do next?
Doing nothing—
nothing doing—
Is there a shortcut
to happiness—
Do I have to
reinvent the wheel?
Do I always
have to be climbing
up a mountain or
creating something
new in order to not
feel guilty or
that I might be
wasting time?
Then I remember—
I’m still breathing
effortlessly—
If that keeps me alive,
what else could be
more important?
I breathe in slowly
and experience
a moment of
genuine happiness.
I can do nothing.
I have everything.
—Milton P. Ehrlich
One Steve
Class writing prompt Steve
(last week was Bill)
turned out of the 12 women in the class 5 had been married
or almost married to Steves.
(None had been married or almost married to Bill.)
Another Steve (2)
Started asking everyone
for Steve stories. Emma said
she once worked with a Steve
who wore ill-fitting pants
and beige Wallabee shoes.
He was a prick.
The whole story.
A Stranger’s Steves (3)
Woman I met
yesterday on a park bench
her name is Susan I asked
do you know any Steve stories
for my collection? Can you
believe I actually married
three of them she said.
—Esther Cohen
Central Park
two companion photographs in black and white,
we took turns standing in profile
before the bright blossoming magnolia tree
in Central Park, with the reflecting pool
fuzzy and out of focus down the hill
both bearded and my hair longish
yours shorter just coming out of chemo
but the twinkle was there, a sparkle
from the unknowable working its way free.
we’d just come from the alice in wonderland statue,
mad hatter in tableaux with the rabbit and
prim child in the victorian apron; you laughing
as I made you sit in her lap, but that picture
didn’t come out, no, only the one of the two of us staring
into the distance, as if we could see the future,
like peering down a rabbit hole where mathematical
algorithms, relativism-space-time-coordinates
could fix us forever still, in that eternity of our own space,
explain the lost moments spent on the couch letting
poisons drip into your blood, like swarming statues broken
from their pedestals at the metropolitan museum, slowly
dissolving like Ozymandias in the desert; all the ancients
crumbling into whirlwinds of dust, as alice
and alice, and the rabbit and alice, and the statue and alice,
stumble before me into that blackened hole
of a photograph, and I hear your laughter again, as you
throw stones at the tiny ships sailing on the reflecting pool,
tsunamis swamping the delicate wooden boats, controlled
by strings from ancient mariners who patrol the shoreline
like gods from Olympus; until driven to holy madness
they pursue us, bloody invective strengthening their limbs,
till we splash across the pool and up the slope
to stand breathless beneath that tree, flowers falling like pink rain
into our upended mouths, not sensing from the photo
that our feet are soaked, and a Cheshire cat is grinning somewhere.
—Thomas Belton
Snowbound, Evening Light
We have been here all along,
so it will occur to us
on the other side
when we reach out our fingertips like leaves
for the last light,
laughing,
we have never been.
—Thomas Festa
I Want to Elope
I’ve been asking around, don’t worry. I only ever kissed a girl. I
can’t listen to music. It will be evidence of my being here today. I
don’t want to marry, I want to run away. I want a series of days and
to say hello and hello. I’ve been thinking about good morning, I’ve
been thinking about good night. I miss presence.
—Elena Botts
This article appears in May 2021.
