POEMS BY MEMBERS
KNICKERS
Bev
Conklin
Knickers are
pants that stop
at the knee.
Why, you ask.
I don’t
know.
You tell me.
Maybe they
ran out
of
cloth to sew.
SATURDAY AT THE VFW
Pat Laster
parking-lot
attendant greeting
each widow with a kiss
Julliard-degreed
she does the two-step
with aplomb
out-of-state Reserves
sample the local scene
moon a chaperone
bold redneck
teaching the dance instructor
a new step
popular band lures
woodsman to town
hounds in his pickup
old men sit and smoke
dreaming of other such nights
--the jitterbug
lonely in a crowd
lovers clinging
to saxophone’s wail
band sounds recede
as frog croaks louder
going home early--alone
BETWEEN THE COW--AND
HEAVEN
Steven
Penticuff
A certain Slant of dark
there is, when tendrest Meat
falls--headlong--through the Grill--
a Gasp--time stops its feet
on icy Tracks--the gods
look on, their unintended
Sacrifice consider--
Behold the lonely Kindred
human crying--with the Sop--
Divinity writ small in bones
and Flesh--and Cow writ large--
whose Moo--from Yonder--drones.
JOANN'S JARS
Velvet Fackeldey
Joann donated boxes of jars
for our church ladies' project.
Joann is short, thin, defnitely petite.
Her small hand grips the midget cane she needs
to help her size 4 feet shuffle across the floor.
Sparkly jewels hang from her tiny ears.
When she smiles or laughs,
her mouth is little.
The jars she gave us are fat quart jars,
the kind with a wide mouth.
They are the opposite of Joann.
OUR LINES ARE BUGLY BROKEN
Valerie
Esker
Our lines are bugly broken,
all out-skayed at the ends.
They pick up only tokens
of whitsey zizibends.
You used to call me “hundly”
while we snuddled on the tuv
and you brought me pretty soflins
when you be-felled your love.
But now you skant the
whitseys
after turning off the cleep.
You fall kazonk and brattle
so loud, I cannot sleep.
You used to stroke my cresses
and squeeze my ample belse.
Oh, now you never do that.
Could there be someone else?
I’ve cooked your fav’rit pak-pots
and remained your bangrous friend,
but our lines stay bugly broken.
I’m afraid this is . . . the end.
SIXTY WATTS AND WIDOWED
Harding Stedler
Ten years of luminescent
bliss
ended peacefully last night
when the fragile bulb burned
out.
I felt helplessly alone
in the unexpected
darkness
after years of never fearing
that I would one day be
widowed.
Sixty watts was my
companion
of the night,
ever faithful as I penned
my
late-night words,
then saved them on the hard drive.
Not only
my companion,
but my protector
when all but prowlers slept.
I mourned its passing
like
I would a friend's,
placed it in a darkened tomb
where it
could journey
through eternity
and never have
to light my
way again.
VISIT WORKSHOP FOR AN
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THE SMELL OF RAIN
POEM
David Van Bebber
I like the smell of
rain,
the refreshing scent,
the earth getting an encouraging
pat on the back
for its hard work.
Sometimes in the spring
after it rains
I wish I could travel back in time
to the eruption of this life
giving flow.
Running like child on a play ground,
I would
charge towards puddles in the downpour,
letting the cooling
warmth of the droplets
soak through my clothes,
quenching my
thirsty soul.
I would breath in the cleansing air
to drown my
tired sprit.
Going back to when it began,
I could soak it all in.
But for now the smell works
to renew
my mind, my inner being.
And that’s the smell of rain.
I MISS THE COWS
Pat Durmon
The meadow where the Black
Angus
walked on all fours and fed freely
have gone from the valley.
They were directly across the river
from my porch .
How I miss them not being
here
on the scene. They belonged
and fit wonderfully well
with the dirt road, butterfly weed
the Queen Anne’s lace, and dragonflies.
Some realtor bought the ground
to create suburban concrete
and tidy lawns with Bradford pears.
I wonder if he knows
the Little Dipper is not for sale
and the stars need to stay put.
RAIN
Judy Young
It rained today.
Drops fell from a water filled sky,
Black and torrid.
But the setting sun scooted
Under the clouds,
Defying them with her brilliance,
Turning the grasses
And the air
And the wet tarmac
Gold and silver.
And the raindrops splashed
And shimmered,
Flipped and flopped
On leaves,
And rocks
Petals and puddles,
Like goldfish out of water.
TYPES OF STRIPES
Brent McCune & Nathan Ross
Stripes make
refs thin,
thieves thick,
and Charlie Brown
drunk.
IT'S RAINING
Laurence
Thomas
--After Jean Cocteau
I don’t ask for much.
I don’t dare ask for more
because you won’t allow it
but when you are close to me
I think I should ask.
Your look says it all.
It isn’t your mouth, only, that speaks.
Your eyes are transparent as glass
which one can see through
but closing them makes it difficult.
I listen through my eyes
for answers impossible to hear.
I can accept the pain
but when I look through your eyes
the sun doesn’t shine because it’s raining.
Let us weep together.
AGILITY ABILITY
Diane Auser Stefan
I walk up the eight red
steps,
stop on each to let
my left foot catch up
with my right
I remember running,
sometimes
two steps at a time going up
or flying down three
up and down the red steps
in and out the blue door
year after year after year
from my days of baby-step-climbing
through today’s hard-breathing,
wheezing octet obstacle
aging, changing gait up
eight
THE POET'S GARDEN
Tom
Padgett
His poem is a
paradise in which he plants,
cultivates, dresses, trims as he sees fit.
Within the walls of form, he sows some seeds
in rows four to six feet long for the flowers
of his mind. Ideas germinate and grow
to decorate a sunny spot. Usually,
he is pleased, but sometimes he is not.
Other times he
sticks a sprig of vine
into the earth and lets it run,
luxuriantly carrying concepts where
it will. Often he takes the cruel
pruning knife and shapes a thought
for fashion or comprehension, or both.
Around the edges, in the fence rows,
what once were scraggly twigs of sprawling
saplings providing no philosophic shade,
now are chubby shrubs or leafy trees
efficiently screening ripening beliefs
from withering exposure to glaring sun.
In this Edenic garden he works, unashamed,
naming, reaping, marketing, naked to
the consequence of overzealous inquiry,
partner to poetic comrades, wary of
the serpent Sloth. In the cool of the evening
he listens for the still small voice that signals
time for fellowship along the garden path
when he will show his work and celebrate
the fruits afforded by the Muse of Creation.
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