you catch what you fish for

       A NORTHERN LEGEND
  (  from the German of Uhland )






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There sits a lovely maiden,
  The ocean murmuring nigh;
She throws the hook, and watches;
  The fishes pass it by.

A ring, with a red jewel,
  Is sparkling on her hand;
Upon the hook she binds it,
  And flings it from the land.

Uprises from the water
  A hand like ivory fair.
What gleams upon its finger?
  The golden ring is there.

Uprises from the bottom
  A young and handsome knight;
In golden scales he rises,
  That glitter in the light.

The maid is pale with terror--
  "Nay, Knight of Ocean, nay,
It was not thee I wanted;
  Let go the ring, I pray."

"Ah, maiden, not to fishes
  The bait of gold is thrown;
The ring shall never leave me,
  And thou must be my own."




                     William Cullen Bryant

from whence the light

GASLIGHT                                                                           








a line of faces borders the strangler’s work

heavy european women

mist blows over dusty tropical plants

lit from beneath the leaves by a spotlight

mist in my mind a riffled deck

 

of cards or eccentrics

was i

a waterton animal my head

is not my own

 

poetry is neither swan nor owl

but worker, miner

digging each generation deeper

through the shit of its eaters

to the root – then up to the giant tomato

 

someone else’s song is always behind us

as we wake from a dream trying to remember

step onto a thumbtack

 

two worlds – we write the skin

the surface tension that holds

                                       you

                                       in

what we write is ever the past

 

curtain pulled back

a portrait behind it

is a room suddenly lit

 

looking out through the eyes

at a t.v. programme

of a monk sealed into a coffin

 

we close their eyes and ours

and still here the tune

 

moves on








               Tom Raworth   +2017






























....

some real damp grazing words

     Transpiration                                                   

Their breath like a tree’s breath, their silence
like a deer’s silence.
Jean Valentine


This summer I learned about transpiration.
The trees puff out clouds, water
rising invisibly from their leaves


in transparent waves, so much water
from a single tree, so much water
from a tightly planted field of corn.


A shimmering rising of exhaling trees,
and we say: Oh my, the humidity!
and lick the salty rain from our lips.


The deer lie in their secret shade
or pick their way through the woods,
having their fill of new leaves.


They drink in the wet breath of trees,
they feast on cotton clouds, until dusk,
when they suddenly appear at pond’s edge.






                                   Susan Sink














....

credo

I Believe                                             

I believe in steep drop-offs, the thunderstorm across the lake
in 1949, cold winds, empty swimming pools,
the overgrown path to the creek, raw garlic,
used tires, taverns, saloons, bars, gallons of red wine,
abandoned farmhouses, stunted lilac groves,
gravel roads that end, brush piles, thickets, girls
who haven’t quite gone totally wild, river eddies,
leaky wooden boats, the smell of used engine oil,
turbulent rivers, lakes without cottages lost in the woods,
the primrose growing out of a cow skull, the thousands
of birds I’ve talked to all of my life, the dogs
that talked back, the Chihuahuan ravens that follow
me on long walks. The rattler escaping the cold hose,
the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see
from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling
to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.

                                                 Jim Harrison




















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