The Barrier Silence

The silence was deep with a breathe like sleep
     As our sledge runners slid on the snow,
The fate-full fall of our fur clad feet
     Struck mute like a silent blow
On a questioning  "hush" as the settling crust
     Shrank shivering over the floe;
And the sledge in its track sent a whisper back
      Which was lost in a white fog-bow.
And this was the thought that the silence wrought
      As it scorched and froze us through,
Though secrets hidden are all forbidden
     Till god means man to know,
We might be the men god meant to know
     The heart of the barrier snow,
     In the heat of the sun, and the glow
      And the glare from the glistening floe,
As it scorched and froze us through and through
    With the bite of the drifting snow.

       Doctor Edward Wilson

from new zealand

Old Man Range

A minimalist production: nothing but
curve, shadow and sky
interrupted by upstanding rock.

Good perhaps for a storm scene
or wilderness journeys: a line of settlers
backlit, against the horizon
and the usual soaring orchestra –

But so bad are the acoustics
a superannuated cocky might bad-mouth
whatever deities preside in this place
and nobody would take offence –

While the hawk
cutting curves of its own
wouldn’t care for that kind of rhetoric anyway.

   - Bill Sewell

visual poem - concerning nudity

Add caption

song of north canada

for Ron and Patti

When are you coming home?

The baby blanket is waiting.
Spring is back and
geese are water dancing
our lake heaves and groans
highways are blessed by skunks
and roadkill gophers and deer feed
the starved ravens, magpies
all the way to Calgary.

Racoons sound like Joni Mitchell's
smokers meow song racing
around our house
the going-away snow sprinkles
and the snow's waist line is shrinking
coyotes cross our groaning lake
race across the bare hills.

When are you coming home?

    -Louise Bernice Halfe

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

  - Wallace Stevens

Freeing Myself

Coi Goi

One day the wind lifts me high
so I look down and see an ant
imprisoned in a multi-folder email box,
in a mobile phone ringing from time to time.
One day the wind lifts me high
so I look down and see a bird imprisoned in the praises of his flock,
in the limits of a sense of beauty pre-arranged.
One day the wind lifts me high;
the wind hands me a pair of wings
and tells me to free myself from wings
and fly above my thoughts.

   Nguyen Phan Que Mai
   trans.  Bruce Weigl

uptodatewithitavantgardestateoftheart

http://www.poemflow.com/937

stolen from some blog

found poem



I don't
 completely follow
how the australian
of Vietnamese descent
got into
the journal
because I thought
it was
generally reserved
for students and staff
of
Naropa,

but that policy
may have changed
 and it may be
more open now
than it was,
or
she may
have been a student there.

Psalm

 

In the small beauty of the forest
 The wild deer bedding down --
 That they are there!

       Their eyes
 Effortless, the soft lips
 Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
 Tear at the grass

       The roots of it
 Dangle from their mouths
 Scattering earth in the strange woods.
 They who are there.

       Their paths
 Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
 Hang in the distances
 Of sun

       The small nouns
 Crying faith
 In this in which the wild deer
 Startle, and stare out.

          George Oppen
.
.
.
.

One Hundred and Eighty Degrees

Have you ever considered the possibility
that everything you believe is wrong,
not merely off a bit, but totally wrong,
nothing like things as they really are?

If you've done this, you know how durably fragile
those phantoms we hold in our heads are,
those wisps of thought that people die and kill for,
betray lovers for, give up lifelong friendships for.

If you've not done this, you probably don't understand this poem,
or think it's not even a poem, but a bit of opaque nonsense,
occupying too much of your day's time,
so you probably should stop reading it here, now.

But if you've arrived at this line,
maybe, just maybe, you're open to that possibility,
the possibility of being absolutely completely wrong,
about everything that matters.

How different the world seems then:
everyone who was your enemy is your friend,
everything you hated,  you now love,
and everything you love slips through your fingers like sand. 


    Federico Moramarco    (+  2012)

peering next to me

I am not I.

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

    -Juan Ramon Jimenez
        trans. -   Robert Bly

SIGNAL

   for Jim Mottonen

Back when I was an Indian
I am climbing through the dark
with my best friend, Billy.
We prowl the deep cuts until just
out of sound of the rampaging
dormitories.  Stradling a fallen tree
we take swigs from a flask
of wine,  draw breath,  and listen.
Above us in the black beyond
the swaying tips of bursting branches,
string tangled in the branches,  our yellow
 kite flaps in a hard wind.
Billy grins and whispers,  three days,  three nights.
In a nearby field two lovers gaze
at the sky,  imagine a ghost,  a UFO.
I look up.
Murmuring,  Billy remembers being
a boy frozen by spidery
shadows on his bedroom curtain.
I remember hands like webs.
He takes the flask from my fingers.
The string is still taut.
We haven't been to class in days.
No one has noticed.

  - Mark Turcotte

Epitath for a Romantic Woman

She has attained the permanence
She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning.
Untended stalks blow over her
Even and swift, like young men running.

Always in the heart she loved
Others had lived, -- she heard their laughter.
She lies where none has lain before,
Where certainly none will follow after.

   - Louise Bogan  (+ 1970)














.....

Almost Ashore

winter sea
over my shoes
shadows
and bright
round stones
at san gregorio

every wave
turns a season
forests adrift
empty shells
memory of fire
so far away
in the mountains
and canyons

silent pools
raise my faces
by early tide
slight my hand
shoulders
almost ashore

light breaks
over the plovers
certain steps
my traces
blood, bone, stone
turn natural
and heavy waves
rush the sand

   - gerald vizenor  (anishinaabe)

by: Miodrag Pavlovic

I wake up
over the bed a storm

Ripe sour cherries
fall into the mud

In the boat
dishevelled women wail

The whirlwind
of wicked fingernails
chokes the dead

Soon nothing
will be known
about that

   trans. - Vasa D. Mahailovich

A LESSON FROM THE FARMER

you told me to ask
and so i did
ask for love
to fill my heart
bigger than the sky
stronger than the dark

you told me to seek
and so i did
look for you
to guide my way
through every up and down
where my life chanced to stray

you told me to knock
and so i did
upon your door
you opened wide
to my delight
took me inside

your seed fell not
upon the path
but on the soil
and sprang right up
within my thirsting heart
you filled my cup

why was it then
i soon forgot
my depth of need
so eager to be on my way
is it enough to taste your tea
when you would have me stay?

yes stay my dear
drink more, i fear
the sun will scorch
your tender shoots
so rest and sink
deeper still your roots

and then return
another day
if love seems cold
as well it may
and you should find
thorns choke your way

we'll sit and chat
and sip some tea
i'll tend my vine
that in you grows
until it yields
some thirty-fold

    - sally mcgill

a picture from Lahore

The Muezzin stumbles down the dark stairway

    grumbling in his beard.

 He passes the arch of the entrance and disappears.

Then the stifling silence settles down

       over the City of Dreadful Night.

The kites on the Minar sleep again,

      snoring more loudly,

the hot breeze

    comes up in puffs and lazy eddies,

         and the Moon slides down towards the horizon.

Seated with both elbows on the parapet of the tower,

      one can watch and wonder

        over that heat-tortured hive till the dawn.

‘How do they live down there?

 What do they think of?

When will they awake?’

 -  Rudyard Kipling

50

take another look

There be many shapes of mystery,
And many things God makes to be,
    Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for
         Cometh not,
And a path is there where no man sought,  
             So hath it fallen here.

        -Euripedes