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Poets in the pond include:

Fixing the Driveway
On a day scraped clean of summer make-up, 
we both can see the old base is crumbling. 
Boulders knuckle the asphalt skin, 
poke their fists through failing tar. 
Where the surface gives,
arthritic spread of cracks and lines appear. 

Once taut with run of marigolds, 
trimmed with bark mulch and stone, 
our tidy path now gutters and sprawls, 
decays beneath rolls of chickweed turf. 
And when we try to strip those mattressings 
of fat green weed, there comes a spill 
of rice-white eggs, a fall of crumbs 
from marriage bed of busy-footed ants. 

Oh, it is not beyond repair. But we are more tired now, 
not so flexible as we once were. And it has rained 
and rained and rained this joint-biting fall. 
The skies grow mute and bald of palliating sun. 
And there’s been neglect, so much neglect. 
Day after day, year after year, another bulge 
a new strain, an unexpected roll 
from endless gulpings of gravel and stone. 

Yes, we’ve fought to hold that line with shovel and pick, 
lifted with pry-bar and hoe, stretched and pulled 
against failure and break, puffed and railed 
against winter growths. But the earth has won 
and not a single boulder’s lost a bit of weight. 
Dizzy from sweat and coal pitch, we cannot stoop 
to tucking road patch into flabby underlay, 
or cover up weak-muscled sand 
with weave and flourish of dissembling trowels. 
Exhausted, we let our progeny scurry and skitter 
on clattery shoes, chalk and 
lay their white-dotted claims 
on the softening body of the drive, 

and trundle up the long, bony path, staggering through 
the yawning bedroom door to shuck our clothes. 
Pulling thick green covers up, 
our unwashed bodies sink and twine, 
soiling the bed with fresh-turned earth 
we wrap ourselves into the cool, winding sheets, 
sink and fill with breach and show 
of troll’s stone-hearted sleep. 

-Jerry Fong

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we should always plunge through woods, 
mayonnaise and onion sandwiches 
in our lucky pockets, ears 
full of battered tunes of rusty trucks 
and braided cries of the whippoorwill 

we should have the ocean, its woven quartz 
at our feet--& coiled inside the stones, 
songs of our only-skin: we should always 
be the one who says, look, Dad, no handlebars, 
& I’m driving to the show & it’s a double feature 

& may we always slip out the back 
as the last music leaks from the tent, 
us all laced up & wading through 
the press of timothy & sea grass 
to the big oak branch hanging over the cliff 

swinging as far as the rope will take us 

-Elaine Preston

Losers
by Adrianne Marcus

The Turn
by Elaine Preston

Falling off the Edge of Summer
by Lynn Kozma

Lynn has contributed to several popular anthologies, including When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple (Papier-Mache Press), and If I Had My Life to Live Over I Would Pick More Daisies (Papier-Mache Press).  She is the author of two books of poetry: Phases of the Moon (Papier-Mache Press) and Catching the Light (Pocahontas Press).  She began writing in midlife after retiring from her career as a registered nurse and makes her home on the south shore of Long Island.