Elizabeth Songstaffe, whose name
is inscribed in my gold-edged bible,
how was your life composed?
Did your pockets brim
with grace notes that scattered
like freckles on a shoulder?
Were you awkward
as a lonely clap, sounding after
a symphony’s first movement?
Born one hundred years ago,
your death was not recorded–
yet, I hear a faint refrain.
Did you once hum across prairies
on humid evenings, or [...]
A compass needle, a lizard, spins half a turn
To keep me in sight, tweaking my sense of direction:
Spring is coming — that way.
According to my 2010 turtle calendar, the Vernal Equinox arrives Saturday, March 20. To celebrate spring’s arrival last year, WIZ ran a Spring Poetry Run-off that turned out to be lots of fun. [...]
The poplar’s shadow on her hand
Indicates a tree in spring.
Willets, catbirds, and broncos all hear
Big-hipped nature dancing across the Rockies
Stripping and putting on the many faces of
A weather-beaten land:
Green, red, brown, and white,
The flag of summer on the horizon.
They are indivisible incompatibles,
This landscape and
The mutterings of a middle woman.
Her words lie naked in a field,
Lost [...]
When the moon becomes a mellow pear
on twilight’s bough, and stars swirl up like maple leaves
before they’re swept into the dawn, I’ve often
walked this garden where the voice of whippoorwills
would carry remnant melodies across long, dusky
hours. At times I feel this eastern breeze has lifted
me, somehow, beyond the soft-lit sloping fields
and conifer lined hills. To [...]
Stand of Trees (by J. Kirk Richards)
I’ve been neglecting what it takes
to piece together dawn from old
snapshots and reminiscence faded
as the blush from Adam’s skin
when God’s question stunned
the garden and he slipped with Eve into
the shadow of God’s voice, their shame
a stand of trees backlit by cherubim
come hounds a-bay to flush them into
death, sin, recognition, [...]
Manchester County, New York, 1823
Late September
washes a season’s green
beyond field and village
and age seventeen;
only leaves
rinsed in afterglow
stir at Joseph’s homespun
passing.
He once knelt
in April grove,
drenched with that glory
of Father and Son.
Then summer wove roots
through his harrowed soul
as those parched by mockery
claimed the heavens
closed.
Autumn wind
shimmers into the trees,
quickening vision
of his pending task:
these hands will lift voices
silenced by [...]
Sing the song of Cain and Abel:
Cain grew grain.
While Abel
brought flesh to the table.
Their lifestyles underscore the fable:
Cain could maintain grain.
But Abel
took food unsustainable.
Then Abel, Cain murdict.
And what is the verdict—
jealousy, heroism,
or the first eco-terrorism?
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Danny Nelson’s “Sustain-Abel” appears in The Fob Bible (http://b10mediaworx.com/b10mwx/peculiar-pages/the-fob-bible/) but is making its online debut here at the Wilderness Interface Zone. [...]
Listen to Mark Bennion read “Waters of Mormon”
Amid the tingle of forest and shadows,
you ford through the water
to the sway of its purl and girth,
a surge of billow where air arrives
in speckles of light. The only
distance is the reach of your hand
and the life after petition and promise.
Trees rustle in incandescence
as the crowd’s whisper fades.
You [...]
Listen to “Sorrow and Song” by Mark Bennion
Sariah
That morning you came to me
I saw the lamp arising in your beard,
a flash of iron and fire
wisping in your robes and hair
dreams full in your mouth like jamid
and your gait uneven on the hardest soil.
I thought I knew what you were about to say,
how sweat and sand [...]
by Karen Kelsay
She is frail, her veil of happiness is
replaced in turn by fear, then bewilderment.
Today, she presents a branch before
garden lilies, like a child might coax a parakeet
to perch. Beside the magnolia, where shadows
meet white geraniums she once planted, the caregiver
settles her in a wooden lawn chair. Uneasy beneath
summer’s glare, she retreats to confines [...]