Thanks to a gorgeous stream of entries, WIZ’s 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration ran even deeper into the season than did last year’s. And indeed, this year’s Runoff has been an inspiring show of green and fertile language, above and beyond what I had hoped. In fact, I’ve been wowed, not just by the craftsmanship [...]
We are celebrating that spring came over and we did not even make a move
Move, he says to me, we need to keep moving
We’re moving, the ground is moving behind our feet
You know what I’m gonna do when I am older?
Nuclear weapons
I’m gonna do nuclear weapons
I’m gonna do nuclear weapons with geraniums
See those geraniums how [...]
I could never make something so perfect, so precise
As midway between summer’s cauldron fire and winter’s ice
A revving of the engines, an adjustment of the eyes
From bleak to bright and coloured light. In short, it’s rather nice.
This season is a halfway house, an opening of blinds,
A rooster season, and a rood awakening of mind
To worlds [...]
At last the world leans the cobbled street
between Church and City Hall
in line with the sun.
The host of sparrows in the barren aralia vines
catches fire again, flickering and dancing so quick,
like a scaffolding of glad candles.
The forsythia hedge at the Mansion gate–
yesterday a row of tattered sticks,
today a bustling brass parade.
And we, the grey coated [...]
Warming rays over frost kissed flowers
Bids cold love depart into a smiling sun,
Enticed thereby to air and cloudy bowers
Where icy winds and snow have lately run.
An earth in step with brimming clouds above
Renews a onetime halted suitor’s dance,
Accepting rain’s entreating poet’s love,
Penned once again in arcing rainbow’s glance.
Cold voices from this blanket world rise up
To [...]
Palm hands
applaud the wind
that brings
lost cloud ships
slowing
to toss extra weight overboard
Rocky hills
blush green from
unexpected rain
Shy poppies
bloom
in spite of themselves.
_________________________________________________________________
To read Judith’s bio and more of her poetry on WIZ go here, here, and here.
*contest entry*
An owl in spring smuggles moonlight
within the cowl of his
flight, sits on my roof,
replays his haunts from
the night before. Dreams
and I part, panels on
the roof drink sunlight,
the owl collects his cache
of sunlight that will
fire the flight of
his dreaming incarnation.
Will he dream of me in a
future reverie? That night,
I dream in silver and gold
I have a [...]
In spring
God seizes winter earth
and swings her upside down
she laughs
till blossoms tumble
from her pockets
like pennies
enough to purchase
one more ticket
another turn
at this graceless ballet
another dawn.
________________________________________________________________________
To read Carla’s bio and more of her poetry go here, here, here, and here.
*contest entry*
I
The breeze has caught
the cherry tree ready to shed
her petals and the air
is filled with flakes.
They settle in grass
and the lee of the garden steps.
The rosebush that clasps
the creaking trellis
is speckled with white.
II
What is the time?
It is now. And the place?
The place is here.
How does now look?
It looks like here.
III
Time will take away the thrill
of [...]
April is the lovers’ month. Though some
would say June, with cancer’s sun
on the full-blown lips of Tudor
and Lancaster—I never (after
all) could think love and war the same.
The swelling earth, the dusting rain
waking the buds of branches. Brave
Green—that bright, defiant color
of the lovers’ month.
And secrets in the woods; I come
here often, whispering the names
I know. I [...]