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Poets in the pond:
Tim Bellows
Greg Bernard
Julie Damerell
Holly Hartwick
Thom Keller
Marla Landers
Bob Mustin
Older
and Wiser
by Julie Damerell
At six she cried
for the worm
she'd unearthed,
fearing its safety
out in the open.
Now seven,
she plots to cut a few in half
for the birds
whose nest she plans to build.
With mowed grass
and berries,
a little dirt,
and vertical sticks to help
baby birds learn
to fly,
she's going to make a world.
I could tell her
it's not that easy.
But maybe she's exactly what the birds
have been waiting for,
maybe she's their dream
come true,
too.
Julie Damerell hails
from Wayland, N.Y. and is just beginning to spread her wings as a poet.
If you like this poem and
wish to contact the poet, e-mail her at
This poem also appears in
Pigs 'n Poets,
http://www.english.uwosh.edu/wolfangel/pignpoet/pignpoet.htm |
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Perfect
World
by Thom Kellar
In a perfect world.
The 4 faces chiseled in Mt. Rushmore
would be Johnny, Kris, Waylon, and Willie,
OJ Simpson would be stamping out vanity
plates
alongside the Unabomber in San Quentin
every wanna-be Doctor, Priest, and Lawyer,
would be
made to watch Paul Newman in "The Verdict"
at least 50 times
and a public school education would include
mining the mother lode
of irony found in the life and times of
Muhammad Ali
In a perfect world.
the Government would find it unnecessary
to spend 50 million bucks
trying to prove a president committed
adultery and lied about it
the NRA would wither up and die due to
lack of interest,
It's army of Lobbyist picked off one by
one through random gunfire
all the camouflaged, soldier of misfortune,
pin-headed, bubba-boys would collectively decide themselves not smart enough
to exercise the right to vote
and every child would know a deep and
sustaining Love
from those in charge of their care
In a perfect world.
I could lay all day on the beach
soaking up Pacific Ocean Sun without burning
my ass off
my 1970, Olds F-85, with the 396, would
get better gas mileage the faster I
 drove
it
something like 100 miles per gallon at
100 miles per hour
there would be fantastic, hole in the
wall, Mexican food joints on every street
corner
with plenty of fresh Tortillas, Habeneros,
and ice cold Negra Modelo
and "Baby Doll" with the wandering eye
would magically see George Clooney
every time she looked my way, causing
her to re-think monogamy.
Califonian Thom Kellar considers
himself an average Joe with some artistic inclinations...poetry, music,
and art.
He feels poetry/prose is
a way of interjecting some creative satisfaction into an otherwise unsettled
and dysfunctional life. You can contact him at:
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silo
by Marla Landers
here
the roads are
pot-holed
thin
& stripped,
scoured by the
wind that
leaves the sea to
cup the pastures in its
jaws
the fields are cow-less
tonight, and the radio coughs at
each bend in the road as the
pickup slips small through the night.
here there are no streetlights.
a silo looms tall in the far
From Yarmouth, Nova Scotia,
Marla Landers is an undergraduate student at Acadia University in Wolfville,
N. S.
You can reach her at:
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no
deposit, no return
by Holly Hartwick
Hike the moon
full and transient,
midsummer celtic song
I celebrate.
Companion sleeps;
I watch her and wonder
what she dances.
I hum an owl's song.
We integrate centuries of mind
revealed in
eidolons.
Anger calms.
You, a broken-winged bird.
Me, navajo stone.
It's sphere,
the rock upon which angels rest.
I remember standing
under arches of winter's stars
breathing blue crackles
of frost.
Once, I said
hush a while whirlwind
but the sound
in the vortex
swirled in circles,
disappearing
in itself.
On firmament round, I
stand
here
and you fly-
the storm circling,
transparent and broken.
Holly Hartwick is from Greeley,
CO. She teaches composition and creative writing at Aims Community
College and hopes to teach students, if not to love language and writing,
at least to understand the potency of the vehicle. E-mail
her your comments at:
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Reloading
by Greg R. Bernard
Grouse hunting took us into the forgotten
forests of northern Minnesota, tired shocks
laboring over washed out logging trails:
my father, anchored behind the steering
wheel;
my face, taut with the determination
a young boy has in becoming
a man. I stepped to the woods
on unsteady legs, gun oil
like silk on my bone-white hands.
October--crisp and still--resurrected
desire despite the double-barreled
burden hanging below my narrow shoulders.
"Stand up straight and
be ready," Father warned
moments before the underbrush
erupted, an explosion of bright
debris and blurred wings keeping time
with my startled heart.
The damp earth revealed the spent
evidence of prvious quests:
the standard red of 12 guages; the economic
black
of a 16 guage; arrogant purple--a .410.
I retrieved a cracked shell, plastic fading.
The nutmeg memory of
gunpowder lingered beneath loamy decay.
Later, a downed bird rested against my
back,
warmth draining from its body
in autumn whispers. I turned to
my father
in the pale, flat light and realized
through the white veil of breath separating
us
what it was we'd been hunting.
Greg R. Bernard is from Peru,
Illinois and is an English/Literature/Creative Writing Instructor at the
Illinois Valley Community College. He can be reached for comments
at:
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Ozark
Moon Rising
by Bob Mustin
The mountain folk just before sunset
Are like a summer dream a slow ooze--
Patient and liquid,
They are the caterpillar
Navigating the underside
Of a windblown leaf--
They crawl from ridge to ridge,
Moving as if on the edge of a knife.
Ad I want to be with them then,
To watch the mountains divide the moon,
One part floating free
into the sparkling abyss above,
The other swimming twoard me
On the quiet face
Of a mountain lake,
Hungrily like a serpent.
It is the moment of marriage,
The mountain folk say--
They cry out, let us come together
With the laughter of children,
And I want to join in to dance with them,
Watching the moon rise over and over
In their round shining faces,
While we make circles,
Our hands joined in the dark.
Bob Mustin is a writer and
an engineer living in Decatur, Georgia, with his supportive wife, Becca.
He writes because he loves the craft, and he hopes to perhaps make a living
someday at the craft he so dearly loves. He can be reached for comments
at:
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haiku
by Tim Bellows
how long it takes
to sit still to be
the ocean I am
Tim is from Sierra College. You can
reach him at:
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