Joyeux Anniversaire!

Pastor Randall Pollard Trilobite

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
 

WHO SPEAKS FOR US

(To honor Kathy Kieth
on her birthday Feb. 6)
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

In our envisioning
of words in our worlds
which rattle us
to awaken love
from all troubled despairs,
as we ease up
from own solitary voice
and express
our circled laughter
even tears beside memory
turning down
the covers
of each unique bed rock
by fresh cut ferns
covering our gardens
to rock with our own space
expect black swans
for a transient sunny day
a good Word has a friend
and guide on watch
by poetry tables
of our best angels.

____________________

GERTRUDE STEIN'S DAWN

—B.Z. Niditch
 

In Paris


a student 
from the Left bank


beyond time


kicks a soccer ball


down an alley way


without money


rings you up


no answer


from the occupation


of a Sapphic poet


in middle earth


somewhere in Apt.#2


spaced by parentheses


putting a last rose


transformed


in a sylvan vase


by correspondences


also unanswered.

____________________

SIMONE WEIL'S SEARCH
—B.Z. Niditch

Sunlight visibly
found you
Simone Weil
through your search
ruminating for
an incarnate answer
with questions,
eyes blinding brim
with a monastic ear
to hear from silence.

___________________

WINTER FORECAST

—Lynn M. Hansen, Modesto

When lengthy winter nights begin to wane
And thoughts of Spring seep in our sleepy brain
We look to Punxsutawny Phil to show
And tell us how much longer we’ll have snow.

If the day is bright with sun he sees his
Shadow, and six more weeks of winter is
Predicted then, or so the legend goes,
With more bad weather and continued cold.

Without the sun a shadow he can’t see
And means that Spring is surely soon to be.
I don’t know why we need a weather man,
Each February Phil will make his scan.

So if the forecast seems a bit severe
Like forty years of endless winter near

Just turn your skeptic eye toward Gobbler’s Knob
Get a well known professional snow job.
 

Day Six

3D Collage by Sandra Yarbrough

—Photo by Michelle Kunert
 

THE BOOKSTORE CAT
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Where has he gone, wanton as a silver
prince on this dull day? The shopkeeper's
cat, the one called Pasha, one of an older
generation of cats, with courtesy but
courtly scorn. Not at all like the kitten
dubbed Spare Change, who bats an action-
hero about like a filmmaker changing
scripts. She waits at the counter as if
forgetting what book she wanted. Pasha
will come, attended by nothing but
a few more sultry hours of afternoon.

____________________

WOMAN WITH CAT
—Taylor Graham

Here she sits. No easy chair; this new place
is empty space. Not home. Where
is Percy? House-mice beware

the tom of muted-golden fur. Asleep,
he'd keep watch with silken purr,
dreaming all the mice that were.

Percy's jaws a velvet trap, shut now. Dead.
Alive in her head—catnap,
yellow tabby in her lap.

____________________

HEADLIGHTS IN FOG
—Taylor Graham

Not really fog, this ground mist that lies dense
in hollows, fence-wire thin, twist
of road—I'm a soloist

steering into an unknown symphony.
One woodwind tree flutes alone
morning music's muffled tone.

___________________

Thanks to today's poets and shutterbug Michelle Kunert (I think it's appropriate to post prehistoric pix on the day of my birth...) BZ has decided to commemorate the birthdays of three famous poets and one more lowly (me—thanxxx, BZ!); Lynn Hansen marks Ground Hog Day; and TG came up with a SOW (Woman With a Cat) and two Forms to Fiddle With despite the bustle of bringing husband Hatch home from the hospital. (Poetry is the most important thing, of course!) About Stein and Weil BZ writes: Two brilliant writers, Gertrude Stein and Simone Weil who lived in France, celebrate their birthday Feb. 3. Joyeux Anniversaire!
 

___________________

Today's LittleNip:

JAMES JOYCE 

(b-day 2/2)
—B.Z. Niditch

I tried to hear Gaelic
waiting for an Irish bread
at a picnic,
I wish a language
once so alive
would rise from the dead.

__________________

—Medusa, with a link in case you missed Phil's forecast: www.nydailynews.com/news/national/groundhog-day-punxsutawney-phil-predicts-early-spring-article-1.1253756

 Michelle Kunert