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BAINBRIDGE ISLAND ��

ARTS & HUMANITIES COUNCIL

found out

Poetry Corners is a program of the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council and produced each April in celebration of National Poetry Month

www.BainbridgeArtsHumanities.org 206.842.7901 221 Winslow Way West, Suite 201 Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

POETRY CORNERS 2012 Local poets explore

the theme Transformation

there is too much beauty in the world, so we pretend we cannot see. we limp around like blind children playing make believe with our hands outstretched to feel along the walls. we live inside ourselves, where the light can’t get in. we hide there until we are found out by love.

– Robert Bevan Dalton

previously published in PoetsWest, Vol. IV, No. 4, winter 2001



On the Development of Clouds





they pile over mountains like wrestling children, determined to pin us with rain while others puff away from playful fray to try on other contact sports

– Tamara Sellman

previously published in Segue, November 2002



My Father’s Family, 1934





Our mother raised the baby in her arms to the Virgin diphtheria fever blazed Nine brothers and sisters knelt said rosaries No doctor for us Even Catholic hospitals charged money Sometimes the baby lived

– Celine O’Leary



Bird Ribbons Venice 2004





You twirl amid a hundred flapping pigeons, eyes closed, face alight.

Ten years old, all elbows, knees, toothy grin. Only your smile in focus.

Your golden hair still whirls like a poofed-‐out dandelion, your arms reach in front of you

tight-‐clenched hands full of pigeon food from the old man who sits by his rickety cart.

This is the image I cling to when I wonder where you’ve gone:

Piazza San Marco in Venice, where ocean daily tries to reclaim the land,

where ground still glistens from the early morning flood—

plaza edges piled high with wooden planks dragged out to form a raised walkway

that barely covers waves washing over the ground.

Sea, so recently underfoot, smells salty, fishy, strong—sky low with rain.

Pigeons coo and peck at the ground for corn you fling; some catch it mid-‐flight,

most wait till it falls. Ground swarms with pigeons, sky fills with bird ribbons

flying together to some unknown command before landing to peck for more corn.

You laugh when one of the birds lights on your shoulder, another on your head.

A little nervous, you close your eyes but don’t want to miss this. You run in circles

after the pigeons, flapping your arms, trying to make them fly up again.

A bit jaded, a bit overfed, a bit too cool, the pigeons don’t move—but you keep trying,

laughing, chasing, spinning. We did not yet see a silent sea of demons that lay dormant, waiting

to steal whatever they could, bit by bit erasing the you that was that child.

Now they have stolen you from us, from yourself.

They wash over you like the ocean that reclaims Venice.

Yet you live there still, my daughter.

– Georgann Turner



Love Bites





I dump in the flour, add the salt; Get sweet butter and brown sugar out; Then mess it together, add the eggs.....

Whip it madly, turn it to........glue?.........Oops! I forgot!

I pour in milk to make it smooth.

I spoon it into oil-‐floured forms; open the oven and shove them in.

I wait ......then peek.......then wait again. At Last! They’re done!

Hot, hot pans!....My finger burns!

The aroma has lured good friends in here; all ready to visit......with love to share.

Quick! Get the butter and bring the honey! “Pull up a chair!”

“The muffins are hot......and boy! Are they YUMMY!”

– Caroline Randolph Clucas



Making Love on the Buddha





Ladybug crawls across the stone god’s lap—he’s

faded from rain and wind crumbling with age—

yellow crocuses adorn his feet

Lady bows in seeming supplication

fans her black lace wings— another bright body lights atop her— feels for the spot

that will set them free

– Carol Despeaux Fawcett



The Summer I Discovered Astronomy





My neighbor is pregnant, planetary in her red bikini. I study the way she tends toward Mars. Beyond her yard in front of the brown house I’m not allowed to enter stands the boy who turns his eyelids inside out for me, my heart squirming at those shocking half moons crimson against mahogany skin, bare and glistening, twin stars of his nipples quivering as he laughs, his sister hitting him Martín, stop it! I don’t walk away, but stay caught in the orbit of his gaze parched earth underfoot something blazing within my belly.

– Ronda Broatch

previously published in Crab Creek Review (2008) and Floating Bridge Review (2010)



19 Cigarettes – San Francisco, 1974





Out the car window on the Bay Bridge a pack of Winstons — 20 less one — I’m quitting! On my way to teach at UC, my first quarter — I’m nervous — have to smoke this one! The other 19 will get crushed under all the cars — completely unsmokeable — can’t go back and get them the way I do on Union Street. There I buy them at the drugstore, tear the pack open, take out one, toss the rest in the garbage can on the corner. I smoke the one, it’ll be the only one — then I walk, take deep breaths of fog, go to a movie, grade papers, more deep breaths — maybe I can do it. Almost — but I really need one — go back to the garbage can, dig through, can’t find them anywhere and everybody’s looking. Oh dear, I’ll have to buy another pack.

– Beverley West



Firebirds For Kathy





I shudder within my image of me, shamble through rain-‐forest shades, dare a rift of charcoal pyre, from black smoke kick up birds of fire that swaddle me in bands of mist, whisk me to slopes of scree. “Choose,” they whirr in my ears. “Choose: granite cairn, or climes of strife.”

– Jay Payne



Where I Began and Ended





In the shelter of the sky I see the sea as deep as it is high and know great quiet lies beneath the wind, the water, everything swirling into rest. A cat would curl here in the sand, far under words, its need only to sleep on top of something soft and still right now. Did you forget what I said, yet? I meant simply to hurt that moment, to cross some field between us and pierce the film around myself I always blame on you. Peace I could confuse with death but won’t this time if breath is life just before the waves and storms cease their play and leave the earth’s fierce embrace. I will live without a mirror as native peoples did and were happy. Like a snake sheds its skin, so I will my fear of trespass — to float in longing or in love wherever tides above the deepest dunes carry me.

– Jennifer (Jenny) Coates



Jackhammer Song





The jackhammer’s din careens through the neighborhood drowning out ticking clocks careless songs of backyard birds chatter of squirrels. The insistent racket ricochets me from morning’s meditation. A roar piercing my calm breaks through solid ground rips away the surface excavates what lies hidden. When the raucous song is over and debris swept away we start afresh scrape and tamp our trowels build a new foundation meant to last. Unrelenting this creating and recreating throbbing my head ringing my ears. Why did I think transformation took place in silence?

– Cathy Warner



Right





If someone’s right, is someone wrong? According to whom? Are they right forever; or if not, for how long? What is being right worth? Where did it come from? Where will it take you and who’ll be there when you arrive? Do 2 rights make a wrong? Or a left? How are being right and making sense related? Are being right and making sense related? If we think we’re right, are we? Who decides? Which has more space – being right or being? When is it right to be wrong? If I’m working from my left brain am I out of my right mind? If you’re not upright are you down wrong? When you’re right, how do you know? Are you right everywhere? Do you have a right to be wrong? Who protects that right? Do I have a right to be left alone? What is halfway from right? What’s in the space between right and wrong? What about the place exactly in the middle, what would you call that?

– Jane B. Pearson



Mergansers in Eagle Harbor





Slanting sun gleams on pristine feathers,

Ducks in a row unfold in myriad rippling reflections: reality into illusion with every passing cloud.

– Micki Kent



Brother Raven





Cruisin’ eastbound Utah 30 in the distance to my right

A hazy shape emerges through the thick air of twilight

A raptor sits upon a fence, plumage ruffled by the breeze

He is delicately balanced, wooden fence rail talons seize

It seems as though he owns the world, so elegant and regal

I wonder... could he be a falcon or possibly an eagle

I’m thinking he might be the czar of this desert haven

He could be that old trickster, you know, Brother Raven

He surveys his surroundings with ever watchful eye

If his interest should be piqued he would then mount the sky

But, as I’m rolling closer, an error does seem clear

What I thought I saw back there is not the same up here

No... flesh and feathers can’t define this ebony scallywag

I am chagrined by my mistake... he’s a tattered garbage bag

– Craig Gurney



Gumbo Dance





At Sweetnin’s on fri-‐day people bring all they got; themselves, dry and raw they dance stir up heat eyes hot, tight and oily like black-‐eyed peas golden, greasy thighs pop and simmer-‐in spicy sweat toes turn to okra the music’s beat, like a spoon, stirs and scrapes against the walls the people bite their sausage lips lick out tongues curled at the end like shrimp at the corners of mouths spit swells into rice

– J. Stephen Whitney

previously published in Gumbo Dance by J. Stephen Whitney (2012) and The Black Scholar (1994)



though never in a Book it lie


www.BainbridgeArtsHumanities.org 206.842.7901 221 Winslow Way , tow, Suite 201 Bainbridge Island, WA 98110



On the summit of Navaho Peak, high on steep granite ridge, the thought sits close: I’m lonely.

A gray feather shivers near his boot; bone and fur pellets curl nearby. Was the long-‐ago counselor right?

You’ve probably never had a truly intimate relationship.

He invites Emily D. from a shirt pocket: To see the Summer Sky / Is Poetry… Leaning closer, she whispers,

True Poems flee. They share dried apples, dark chocolate, peer beyond the Enchantments’

snowy crenellations into silence. The warm breeze gentles them into doze.

Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Washington

– David Stallings



West, toward Friday Harbor





The air is chill, but I sit steaming in my car, cheeks burning from a recent argument, rehearsing all I might have said, when the ferry turns — west, toward Friday Harbor — and in a farewell burst of light a patch of sun streams through the clouds, all colors joined to carve a bright white path across the sea. Reflections sparkle, bathing the arch above, and presence pours over worn gray metal like water over a baby’s head. Awash in light, we chuckle together — ferry and water, baby and I — reveling in the radiance. Pulse slows, and temper fades as colors drift apart and dim, preparing for their nightly spin into darkness. Twilight hangs her orange wash — one last brief flare — upon the line that splits the sea from sky, then drops from view as rain begins again, and on that final glide into the slip fluorescent lights blaze forth, announcements blare, and spirits rise like engines, re-‐ignited, roaring into life. As cars pour off onto the dock, all final residue of anger’s wiped away; windshield stroked clean, and then again, and then again.

– Diane Walker



My Cousin, Praying





She presses her finger into the piece of meat and dots it with butter. No reaction. She irons the tablecloth a second time and sits down to pray. Dear God, she prays, I feel sure I have said these words before. I have cooked this meat before. I have smoothed this cloth, this blue and white striped cloth, so thin, so thin, so old it would embarrass my mother if she knew, but she does not know, how the horizon is laid out to its breaking point, the trees are tipping questions at my windows, how the wine spills itself upon the floor, Oh, transform me and my banal prayer and my rag of a cloth

and my hunk of cow and my lump of yellow cream into something near to Glory. More than me, Lord, more than me. Something muted and mysterious or something molten or rubbery and hot.

– Kay Morgan-‐Schein







yes, I did recognize the change I saw it all of a sudden a year ago or two in a blink they were her hands my mother’s smooth, shiny warm and strong I thought what a striking blow to my youth nobody really wants to be their mother, right? but wait a minute warm and strong? yea and intelligent safe, capable hands like my mother what’s so wrong with that? I mean really we should all be so lucky to have a mother with hands like mine.

– Stephanie Balzarini

found out



So Long





So long I’ve lived near water sea or Sound wind in the clouds tranquility and storm form who I am if I should leave, who will I be? They say that blood trumps water but they’ve never lived beside the sea.

– Cindy McDole Vandersluis previously published in Treasures in Time, January 2011



Untitled





The wind howls through the valley lifting snow and sculpting ice banks walled along the river. White firs lean in bowing side to side loosening their coats. Though night is approaching I follow ski tracks into the wood.

– Laura Schaeffer



The Future





I can still walk the walk into town— last leaves clinging, and light entering low into a sky that’s brushed with gray. I can walk without identity, my wallet stolen and no one on earth knowing where I am, likely no one to tell later, “I took a walk”. The hurt is the way a day unused hurts in your lifetime’s bank account. I write it down with ink as black as I can find. And by so doing, I include you in this walk: perhaps with gloves like mine—torn and not replaced although my fingers turn to warm with thoughts of new ones. And perhaps you have a different stride and are purposely going from one place to another, maybe for work—head down, mind on progress—perhaps then you pass me going in the other direction, signaling the future from right now.

– Carmi Soifer



You are a longtime islander





when you remember Winslow Green not as green, but as a vacant dirt lot where the circus pitched its tent.

– Rebecca Rekow



Aging





At twenty, how I tried to push my time To ten-‐point-‐something for a hundred yards, Then blew the knee one night at basketball. At thirty-‐five I tried reclaiming youth Through basketball but only found fatigue Prepared me for a dislocated joint. I ran up stairs till I was forty-‐eight, And then could run no more; the mileage of My youthful sport had shut me down at last. A bannister is now my friend; I walk With calm, enjoying journeying as much As reaching there, wherever “there” may be.

– Al Gunby previously published in Looking Back, Seeing Ahead, 2004



Supernova





All of the gold on earth formed in the death of stars three hundred million light years ago, gathered in molten veins deep in the heart of the earth as it cooled. Interstellar gold rains down on us still, collects on our skins, washes into rivers, into this sea. Fog horn bellows— this boat could be traveling anywhere. You wait on the other side, in a world that doesn’t exist for now. Deep ripples pleat and disappear at its edge. Weak sun gilds leaden water and drawn by specific heat and gravity, the gold on my hand will find yours.

– Kristen Gard Hotchkiss



Joy





Even as we walk through Earth’s garden as single blades of grass and stalks of rhubarb

find their way through the given light apricot blossoms ripen as little suns while cancers of futile Empires backslide

into their own darkness all across this universe

– Raymond Greeott



Tom (Salmon Returns to the Gravel Shores)





As a young mother in ’34 I cooked rice and more whatever my boys brought home to go with it Some nights venison, others possum Wild rabbit or stolen chickens – into the pot, all for! Tom, my oldest, would go out alone rowing He liked his fish and was proud to take it pulled from the Sound any time he could get out there. He was immortal, a Great Wave he said. Moon-‐seen nights or windspurned mornings, until the dawn his swamped boat came ashore. Now I leave my old lady room at Messenger House climb down the back stairs, escape to blowing night and walk out to the point with store-‐bought sushi Crumble rice and salmon into the gravel As the great waves roll in, my Tom, him for.

– Stephen Edwin Lundgren From the unpublished collection On Island Shores (Album)



She Swam Into Shallows





at the toe of a shear, miles from anywhere, in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. Deathly tired, and unable to go on, the bottom rose to cradle her as she lay down to rest—now her bones lie on a jumble of rocks twenty feet deep where they fell from her sacred flesh. We cut the motor and hear the clear water lap against the tree-‐shrouded cliff as the day darkens up gray of late afternoon. Eagles shriek and jit-‐jitter above and the white bones of her ribcage form a cross or two on the rocks below. The heart shaped disks and vertebrae of her strong back have settled in a line through the collapsed cage of her ribs. Her bones jump and dance on the ocean floor as we float in the light chop. Our thoughts adrift, we point the skiff away from this shadowed cliff, throttle up towards our anchored boat and a warm dinner, away from her grave where she lies on the floor of Frederick Sound in the shape of a humpback whale.

– Charles Sharpe



When You Are Dead





When you are dead, finally dead, I’ll get a dog. A yellow Lab, Like I’ve always wanted. I’ll plant nasturtiums, which you don’t like, and I’ll sleep in the middle of the bed. And when I am dead, finally dead, you can go to the casino and eat coconut cake. You can read with the light on Way past midnight: And you can sleep in the middle of the bed. I don’t know who’ll bring you an apple. I don’t know who will tell me “I love you,” from across the room, When you are finally dead, Unless it’s the dog.

– Joan Piper



Woman with a Fork





Her time was short, she was told, So she began to make arrangements And get her things in order. She called the parish priest. Together They found a fitting scripture, The songs, the flowers, the special dress. “There’s just one more thing, Father, It’s the most important thing.” He was puzzled by her last request. She said, “I’ve been to many dinners When after the main course Someone would lean towards me and say, ‘Remember – keep your fork!’ I know there’s more beyond this life I’ll be ready for something grand I believe the best is yet to come, So I want everyone to see me With a fork in my right hand.”

– Joanne Pramhus



Constance





Two weeks after your death

you come to me in a dream

a veil of wind blown in you rush through rooms

then up the stairs

I follow you to a bedroom where you glide under the bed

become rolling waves

flow into the fireplace turn to flame

then ash

a window flies open you drift

grain by grain

away

– Kathy Langhorn



Filaments’ Tug





In the morning chill I walk to the heap, Toss in a week’s worth of kitchen waste. The gravel beneath my feet crunches, a weekly routine. Outside, in silence, another cycle flows. Unseen creatures multiply, decline, multiply, decline. In musky rhythms, in dank crevices, filaments of actinomycetes slowly embrace brown, matted leaves, stems, rinds, husks. Single-‐celled cocci and spirilla, tiny spheres and spirals, work blind. Barely visible fungi for the toughest debris. Molds and yeasts spread themselves out in layers of gray colonies, consuming, releasing. Humble work, this taking of complex to simple, conversion of rotting scraps to redolent humus. Inside, my hands rest on the cutting board. “Life eats life,” said Joseph Campbell. The sutra of the compost begs for my attention: See how this works? As I walk the gravel path each week, I am pulled to summon enough equanimity to accept. Enough, so that when the time comes, I will yield.

– Bobbie Morgan



Fifty-Fifty





Clearcut the precipice looms valley beyond the ridge turned crucible for molten ground but here the air clear so pure it burns White-‐lipped jackals guard the road eucalyptus leaves skirling like aspens on the Great Divide where elk bugle and loons howl most lonely sound the rattle and clack of bamboo stems Could Bashō make a haiku of it reduction to bone and roux trunks helter-‐skelter where they fell through air turned fire bare-‐root stems given light will bloom

– Rachel Nova



The Reincarnate





My eyes took in this sight another year, when hand in hand we walked the rocky shore, and all the pleasures of this day call up the time when you and I, wandering in the Springtime of our lives, searched the horizons of Paradise. We never read the promise of the Book, “...if two lie together, they are warm,” But so we lived, and never counted time. The fragrance of the flowers dimmed our senses to the passing of the hours, so sweet the days... We never dreamed the reckoning to come. What was I when last I came this way, before the days I spent with you? Was I a fish, a bird, a moth that lives an hour? What color was my flesh? What language did I speak on the ramparts of Babel? What poor craft now will give this common hand its due? Present joys in shadows dwell, And only dreams can tell where I’ll begin again.

– Richard Levin previously appeared in Collective Visions’ Ars Poetica exhibit, March 2012



Released





The floodgates open

and the river of yourself runs out.

You flow from fear to joy

And back again.

Overturned, turning over,

Exposing the belly of the beast and naming it,

And it naming it, you are finally released.

– Robin Hruska

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