August: Susan Derrera

This is Susan Derrera, and this is my poem, "August" from Crosscurrents North:

This evening
as I rowed away
from the house,
my feet cool
under the collected
rainwater
on the bottom
of the boat,
I looked at the lake,
at how the rain
thrown across it
like children's jacks,
flashed
then disappeared--
and at that moment,
while rain curled
silver fingers
through my hair
releasing the wildness
there, I knew exactly
who I was
and what I loved,

and I thought of
you, whoever you are,
however lost you may be,
and I brought you
here
to listen
to the music
of the rain
on leaves and
the feathered backs
of grebes
and your own warm
skin.

When we rounded the island
the sky began to
lift and even the depths
were made clear-the smooth
gray rocks at the bottom,
your own
jeweled heart,

and after we were done,
tied off at the dock,
I brought you in
all wet and new
and offered coffee
in a small blue cup
and a piece of
rhubarb pie
hot from the oven,
the juices flushed
and running
on the plate.

Bones: Amy Purevsuren

This is Amy Purevsuren, and these are several stanzas from my poem "Bones."

"I am a thing sculpted by footfall
day after day, over rocks and tundra,
along game trails or no trails on high passes.

I cross over bear tracks laid in sand,
just formed, nearly warm. We each pass
our ways privately. In my tent

I read, write, invent sense out of this life,
humming words into lines: words,
raining thoughts, water for my landscape.
...
Sometimes I am visited.
After the wind spends days blow-
drying the sky, no breath left,
the valley lies stark naked of sound.
I lie at night under the giant starless silence
listening to flower petals curl to sleep
like wolf tails, to vole bellies
whisper through grass, and for
the breath of a bear, which does
come, if you travel for a time in the north.
Usually, we are equally startled;
I holler hey hey hey and the bear
grunts and thunders off.
I crawl from my tent and stand naked
so as to see the maker of sounds."

Low to the Ground: Libby Roderick

This is from "Low to the Ground."

"We stand on the edge of a cliff in the deepest night I've
    ever seen
People looking for light, people who cherish a dream
But the light's shining out from our eyes
And the dream's resting deep in our souls
If it's magic we're needing to keep us from falling
It's magic we already know

It's music that keeps us alive
It's dancing that sets our hearts free
It's children remember the laughter in life
It's animals teach us to see
Stay low to the ground
Live close to the earth
Don't stray very far from your soul
It's simple things show us the reason we're here
And it's simple things keeping us whole."

On Its Own Terms: Alice Galvin

It's December, and I rely on poet Hal Borland to remind me there's more than one way to experience this month. He offers us a more colorful way to look at December in his poem "On Its Own Terms."

    ‘It wasn't an outdoor poet who coined
the phrase "bleak December." It was some-
one who probably slept late, had sluggish
circulation and was afraid of catching
cold. December was bleak because it wasn't
June, loud with bees and bright with
blossoms.

    True, December can be raw and cold and
its days sometimes are dark, but it is
neither bleak nor colorless. Go outdoors
soon after sunup, which now comes late,
and even on a lowering day you probably
will find a frosty scene of dazzling
beauty. If the day is clear it can be a
world transformed by frost or snow, newly
created, fragile as spun glass, ephemeral
as the passing hour.
...
    Taken on its own terms, no December day
is really bleak. December wasn't meant to
be June.'

A Prayer for Old Age: Wayne Mergler

"A Prayer for Old Age" by William Butler Yeats

"God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?

I pray -- for fashion's word is out
And prayer comes round again--
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man."