Journal

Audit of my Bee Heart

Young, young, I flew to Oregon grapes for those giggling yellow blossoms, like bells,
that gaily gave their pollen and nectar. I visited one, a patch, many patches, and I
was smitten until the blooms, with their smooth beauty, shriveled away.

A lesson learned, but not taken to heart.

I went after willow and cherry, the first standoffish, the other unfailingly coy. Too
standoffish, too coy.

I found poison oak, madrone, and clover.
Poison oak, always welcomed me at its two houses, the yellow house of pollen and
the red house of nectar, but I heard murmurs that something in those houses was
unkind. Madrone—bells, but not so giggling or smooth or simple as the Oregon
grapes of my early days. These bells were cold and unreciprocating when I buzzed
my compliment. And clover, such a ne’er do well, a pink mop, a scent to draw me
in. I was drawn in. But never taken; clover doesn’t take a bee the way the bells do.

So I moved on. Leathery nectar wells of cascara, pivoting pedicels of vetch—I tell
you, one must be prepared to tumble.

Then raspberry, then thistle, then fireweed whose pollen is inedible and purple
besides, but still, had I learned nothing? The fireweed lured me in. Those
handsome stalks. Magenta walls. Majestic views. I felt royal, just to visit.

The days have shortened. That would happen, I probably knew.
And dew dampens my prospective loves.

I look into my heart.

It’s clover where I’m most at home, not because of what the others did wrong
but because of what the clover did right. It allowed me to land and visit and be me.
It’s clover I seek in the autumn of my life.
Clover, whose head is now white, with its scent more innocent than guileful.
Clover, who holds me up. I feel fine.
So welcomed, I hardly care to leave. I hardly care to leave.
Clover, the scent of my life.

Barb Lachenbruch is a former professor of forest ecology. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon where she is an occasional substitute teacher. She spends part of every week at her cabin where she gets to be an unapologetic botany nerd. She has published creative nonfiction in journals including High Country News, CALYX, and the Gold Man Review and fiction in Flyway. You can find her at barblachenbruch.com .

Change in the Weather

My four-foot-eight grandmother spent hours
under the kitchen window she couldn’t see out of.
She intuited the weather: no rain by 10 so not until…
She’s gone to bones under a headstone
and I don’t have the recipe. I have TV forecasts,
but this time of year it’s obvious: grey skies
even if there’s no rain. Last night I dreamed
a storm came in, dumping feet of rain, a torrent
rushing down the driveway, me leaping
the surging river into my grandmother’s house
that had not yet floated away. She’d been willing
cargo in the hold of a ship from Hungary to America
escaping hunger and war. Even now rafts and small
boats bring the lost who hope to be found.
But I know there’s a border patrol now. I know
there are guards waiting to send seekers back.

Susan Landgraf was awarded an Academy of American Poets’ Laureate award resulting in a book of Muckleshoot Indian Tribe poetry published by Washington State University Press. Journey of Trees will be published in May. Her other books include Crossings, The Inspired Poet; What We Bury Changes the Ground; and a chapbook Other Voices. More than 400 poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Nimrod and others. She’s given workshops and readings in the US and abroad and served as Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington, from 2018 to 2020. She lives at the edge of the Bingaman Pond protected area.

Blessed are the Front Porch Sitters

Blessed are the front porch sitters
the back fence talkers
the casserole bringers
the pie bakers
the time wasters
the two o’clock tea takers.

Thank you to the neighborhood watchers,
the people who take care of children
and the ones not right in the head.
Thanks for the years old people
have spooned over our town
day by day, struggle or ease.
Thanks to the jailbirds and politicians
for someone to blame,
and the folks who stare in pond water
to read the future.
Thanks to those who look into things
deeper than I can imagine.

Blessed are the music makers,
the story spinners
and those who do the work.
Blessed are those who bring comfort
when pain is everywhere.

Gary Lark’s most recent collections are Easter Creek, Main Street Rag, Daybreak on the Water, Flowstone Press and Ordinary Gravity, Airlie Press . His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Rattle, and others. https://garylark.work/ 

Paper

Anne Frank said, “Paper has more patience
than people.” Her voice, so alive
in her diary, was one the Nazis couldn’t silence.
This morning I wrote on white notebook paper
with lines like unimpeded roads—my scribbles
thin guy wires connecting me to myself.
Before computers, carbon made ghosts
of my poems and essays, my thoughts pressed
into gossamer onion skin. When I gaze
at the flimsy sheets now, it’s as though
they come from another self.
Paper, my long-suffering friend, I love
your placid face. Where else
could I ask questions no one can answer:
Why does my adult son, locked
in autism, not know how old he is? Why
does he stride away, talking to himself
without saying goodbye?

A former high school English teacher, Phyllis Mannan lives with her husband and daughter in
Manzanita, on the North Oregon Coast. She has received a Literary Arts Fellowship in Poetry
and has published a poetry chapbook, Bitterbrush (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have
appeared in Cloudbank, The Oregonian, Rain Magazine, Verseweavers: The Oregon
Poetry Association Anthology of Prize-winning Poems, and elsewhere.

Through the morning

an espresso over ice
topped with bitter
tonic water. a drop of fresh
lemon juice. a garnish –
fresh rind. over our balcony
light climbs like a squirrel
down gutters on saturday
mornings. I walk
from the kitchen
to the sitting room section
in a t-shirt and underpants
and socks. move
through the morning
like a horse on a hilltop,
casual and confident, quiet.

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has nominated twelve times for Best of the Net, ten for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections; Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016), Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022)