Our Worlds Are One Space

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

BOSTON MARATHON
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Not dead
but re-inspired
to run
not as a runaway
nor to run away
but to reach
the finish line
with waters of joy
in leafy laughter
and to enjoy May
like every mother's
son or daughter.

_____________________

MAY NIGHTMARE
—B.Z. Niditch

Walled in between fish hooks
and lines of tackle
with a series of nightmares,
in the first
sleepless on the sea bed
leagues under water
my cold nostrils
held up
with a snorkel on backwards
to meet new creatures
undreamed of
like crabby
crustaceans half an ocean
long and wider than my eyes,
second dream,
out on my deck
my kayak floats out
from the Atlantic to a bright
Pacific sun and I'm being
televised by a reality show
fractured by time
greeted by Hawaii winds
off the main island,
third,
reaching the Coast
giddy from the adventure
turning to rotate
with a rippled rain
overpowering the boat
impaled by a big fish
who offers me dinner
feeling like Jonah
shocked by the rocks
veering westward
along the shore's edge
with a charlie horse
in my smashed leg
fractured by time
and my breathing
on my own
knotted by something
at least
to recognize or feel,
make my way
up the Coast
by greenish seaweed
holding on to these lines
and feeling alive.

___________________

ARCHEOLOGY DIG
—B.Z. Niditch

In the deserted village
by a deep well
feeling like an exile
coming home
as a young mystic
with my Spanish poet
St. John of my Cross
in my deep hip pockets
after sixteen years
of a Beat body weighing
on my holy land dig
near the cluster of doves
by ancient jars
once filled with honey
by light kaleidoscopes,
an old loom uncovered
a ritualized past
alive with totems
and links of stone
joining monks' frescoes
a rabbi's fringed shawl
an arabesque arrangement
for a wedding ceremony,
a rubble of time pushed me
under a colossal hill
of sundown
when the poet slept
on a prayer mat all night
the bitter root winds
forced me to my knees
and a full moon faded
shadowing the stars
the earth spoke to me,
alone with nascent trembling
turning back my dreams
traced in the sand
with the ease of memory.

_____________________

ON A SWAN LAKE
—B.Z. Niditch

I took
My friend Galina
along the blue liquid sea
at Rockport
to see the swans
retelling me
how she was doing dishes
in her small apartment
along the Arbat
when my poems
came on Radio Moscow
and she contacted me
before emigrating
from the Russian ballet
to San Francisco, New York
and Boston
how in a trajectory
of our human race
a poet's iconic presence
arrives on time
opening our writing cases
when our worlds are one space
then invited me
to see her performance
in a transforming dance
fixed forever in my memory.
 

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

PALE YELLOW
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

There is a place in your childhood house
where, among dust bunnies, you found
three things:

1.  a paperclip, only slightly bent
     from its original shape;

2.  a copper penny, tails up;

3.  a blue and pale yellow
     marble that reminded you of your
     homeland between seas.

You managed to reuse the paperclip, and
you saved the penny in an army tank
piggy bank.

When you left your homeland between seas
and never returned, your neighborhood
buddies all cried real hard.  Paul still has a
POW sticker on his pale yellow microbus.
 

(prev. pub. in Grist, 2012, 

Missouri State Poetry Society Anthology)

______________________

THE RED HEN
—Carol Louise Moon

Is one not enough?
Red Hen lays a crimson egg.
 
Is my heart ripped out?
I install a water pump
as patio flowers die.

One more shingle falls.
I am 3 splintered-paint chips
away from calling.
But there are too many tears;
it's not yet raining.
Your voice is still at midnight.

Cracks in window panes
like cracks of my failing sight
lead me to believe
less in me and more in you—
of your unfailing vision.

Are you with me yet?
The night is long; my
house is in ruin.
Carry your golden hammer.
Bring to me my crimson egg.

_____________________

SILVERY
—Carol Louise Moon
 
Sing to me "By the Light of the
Silvery Moon" on my death bed.
Sit beside me, book in hand. Read
some deeply romantic
sonnet or vivid pastoral
scene as I dream a white blanket—
subtly moving, silently breathing.

_____________________

BLUE GRAY BAY
—Carol Louise Moon

From hilltop cliff I see the boats
skim across a blue gray bay.
White, the seagulls—happy, playing—
watch with me at noon.  And soon
the goats who graze nearby will stop
to watch the day's parade.  We are
so rapt, and so content in bright
sunshine, ice plant, grass and sand.

____________________

Our thanks to today's contributors, including the work from Photographer Robert Lee Haycock, part of his Socrate's Daemon series. And B.Z. Niditch is among the many poets, local and otherwise, who will have work in the upcoming issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF (#18), which will premiere at Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe next Thursday, May 16, 8pm. Be there!

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

Poetry moves the still waters everyone may drink in.

—B.Z. Niditch

___________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock