THIRTY-SEVEN CENTS
Vol. 2, No. 9            An Online Chapter of Missouri State Poetry Society        1 September 2003

MSPS STATE CONVENTION

Click on Spare Mule Online in the Contents menu above to read details about the convention given in the latest issue of our state newsletter.  Or click on Missouri State Poetry Society and then click on State Convention for fuller coverage.

Roses
pink peonies
coral bells sweet william
in glass jar by newly scribed stone
for Mom


ONE SUMMER DAY
Velvet Fackeldey

The lemonade with tinkling ice
so cold, so nice
on this hot day
it seems to say

Sit back, relax, enjoy a break,
no need to bake.
I'll cool you down,
erase that frown.

The glass is cold against my cheek,
I'd sit a week.
But life moves on,
this day soon gone.
 

SEPT
Todd Sukany

Cubicles on wheels
Breathing out a thaw
on autumnal mornings
and undisciplined mournings

Bring combatants
to the DMZ
for academic equipping
and mental whipping.

 
THE NEW SUIT
Bev Conklin

When I was young, I tried so hard
to follow the rules laid down
by everyone else.

I wanted everyone to love me
for carefully following the pattern,
never going outside the lines.

My fifties found me basking
in the approval of my peers,
envied for my possessions.

But I didn't like the person I had become.
Legitimate questions and intuitive knowledge
had been quelled too long.

Personal desires had been ignored too often.
When these suppressions inevitably erupted,
I moved far from the familiar and started anew.

Pursuing the passions I had put aside,
living only the laws of love
for myself and all others,

I joyously clipped and cut outside the lines
to form a new pattern of life.
It suits me perfectly.
 

TWO DAYS INTO THE NIGHT
Jean Even

Two days into the night
Brings morning light
Into daylight.

Things that were to be
Turned into fleeting dreams,
Fleeing from a moment of hope

Broken and crushed beyond repair,
Dashing my dreams into despair,
Burning with pain into the night.

Until morning brings bright light,
All hope is gone from my song,
A brigand's destruction is my plight.

Two days into the doom,
I'm withering away in gloom,
Then Love breaks through with delight,

Brings new dreams with hope restored.
I place my trust in heaven's home
Where brigands can't enter to destroy.
 

SEPTEMBER SONGS
Harding Stedler

The poems from your pen
were silenced by the chemo
when cancer came.
The chemo stole your rhythms
and, like a thief,
foretold the end
of lines that sing.

But those singing lines
of yesterday
still live
on winds
that greet the morning.
They celebrate the sun
and give melody
to mockingbirds.
They paint the dawn
new blue
as backdrop for wispy clouds
that journey east
in search of sandy beach.

I sometimes step
to rhythms of September songs
when your voice
is loud and clear.
I want to hear them
for Septembers yet to come.

RIPE PEARS
Gwen Eisenmann

The fragrance of ripe pears came to me,
and I saw them, yellow, smooth, small urns
holding remnants of summers I remember.
I was a child at our old farmhouse
where pear trees were just outside the back door,
and the ground underneath was full of ripe pears.
I was thirsty and hungry, taking bites
and drinking juice that dribbled down my chin.
The air was warm with pear scent that drew
buzzing insects to suck the sweetness too.
Yellow jackets, yellow and brown like the pears,
and wasps and bald-faced hornets, and bees--
all innocently sharing the nectar so
freely given and fearlessly taken.
Children drinking from the breast of the mother,
unconscious bliss is what we were.


SEPTEMBER
Pat Laster

I swear
the crow said "Hi"
as I walked past its perch.
Is she lonely too, this crisp fall
morning?
 

CLUMSY
Wesley D. Willis

Oh dear!
Mother, I have stepped
on your prize
tomato, big red,
in the garden.
I'm so sorry.

I also broke
the blackberry vine,
Grandpa's favorite,
the one called Isaac.

Then I stumbled
over Dad's jalapeno
pepper plants--
broke three.
Oh dear!

Then onto Sister's
ceramic dolls,
all broken.
I shall hide in Old
Luke's caverns forever.


ODE TO AN APPLE
Judy Young

Granny Smith,
    neé
McIntosh,
    her husband
William's Pride
    and joy, sat swinging on
Holiday
    under a
Spartan
    apple tree in an orchard near
Cortland,
    fingering a
Golden Nugget
    on which was mounted a
Pink Lady
Cameo,
       dreaming of her youthful,
Gala,
Ginger Gold
    days, drinking
Winesap,
    which dribbled
Red Delicious
    down her chin while walking down a
Country Road
    on the outskirts of
Rome,
    tempting her
Golden Delicious
Jonathan     
    with an apple of Eden.

 

THE RACE
Darwyne Tessier

I live Life's events quickly.
Faster and faster I run through them.

Moments anticipated at the start
flash by. As I look back

at the finish--as I close my eyes
and the darkness descends,

have I won,
or have I cheated myself?

CHICORY
Tom Padgett

Along the road to the church
a flourishing ditch of chicory
announces quietly its generous gift
of simple but deceptive summer beauty
for the one who turns aside to see.

Lavender blue blossoms open regularly
and lavishly in twos or threes
on joints of slender stalks
that stretch and burst with flowers
almost before they leave the ground.

With fourteen spokes or so,
each one-inch wheel of bloom
adds magic to a waving wand
that levitates mysteriously the spirit
of the one entranced beside the road.