Journal

Rain

She’s graceful. A wall of flame. She’s beautiful.
She’s the lover that I will never have. The morning
is vulnerable and open like the face of a beautiful
man who is staring at the woman he is deeply in
love with. I think of God when I think of her. Of
course, He created her. The woman that I am in
love with. There can never be anything between us.
She will go on to have fearless children. I will go
on to write novels. She is married to a poet. (All men
are poets in their own way). We haven’t really
talked. She admires me in her own way and I admire
her. In photographs, her magazine-hair is wavy.
Luxurious. She looks like a film star. I want to mark

the return of the tragic hero and saint in her arms.
I want to find the peace and harmony that I cannot
find anywhere else there (in her arms). I used to
think about death but now when I see her, think of
her, all I can think of is life. I want to come just
as I am to the breathy dream of her. The goal of her.
She’s savage in her love (I know) and I already
know that I won’t be able to exist in that kind of world.
All my life, love and the relationships I’ve had
with others have been supervised. First, by my parents.
My mother’s instinct. My father’s inhospitable silence.
Then by a God that had to be feared. A God
that died for humankind’s sins. So, I flit and

flirt from men and women powerful and elegant
in their own way. I know the world of prayer
and meditation but I don’t pray to be with her.
I pray for her future happiness. I know the chaste
world of hospital corridors. That universe of
doctors and nurses and patients and medicine.
I’ve spent winters in hospitals (every year or
so, when the depression returns). She’s changing
the world around her like a world seen
through falling snow. She is body. She is soul. I am body too. I am soul.
All I want to do is kiss her sweet open vulnerable
face. Her moonlit shoulder blades. The nape of her milky
neck. (Of course, I know nothing will come
of this love). She will raise fearless children (that’s the
reality of the situation),
and I will go on to write novels.

Abigail George, a Pushcart Prize nominee, is a South African blogger, essayist, poet and short story writer. Recipient of grants from the NAC, the Centre for the Book and ECPACC, her work is forthcoming in Aerodrome, Mortar Magazine, Off the Coast, Spontaneity, The Missing Slate, and The New York Review.

Made Visible

The years teach much which the days never know.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Steel tines scratch, then pierce
oak leaves, brittle, brown, sticky with wet.
I rake the old trees’ sheddings, these dregs
of my choice to quit my mother’s dream job,
to live like her grandfather, raising goats.
A life, his son, who loved the Divine Comedy,
escaped only with difficulty. And yet,
I never regretted having traded
memo writing for manure shoveling.
When chores grow burdensome,
as they must, sometimes,
I toss a toy for the dog,
for whom work is play.

In a strange symmetry, we share a dull ache
in a weak joint. To last all day
at our self-appointed tasks, I need to pace
my throwing with her devoted chasing
a stick, stripped of its bark, gleaming like a pale bone,
tattooed with sooty shadows, inking the small
indentations left by her teeth. I watch
her focus, my dog-daughter, so different
from all the herders I have raised,
marvel how she ignores the goats
when she can retrieve instead,
hear my mother saying “you will understand
when you have children of your own.”

It starts to drizzle. The rain does not bother her.
And I, unlike my mother, don’t frown at cloud’s release. Now,
below the dark firs, I clear away broken branches, but also cones,
closed-up tight, protecting their parent’s future, passively
awaiting a stronger sun. I survey
the long stretch of packed gravel, already uncovered,
firm and functional, connecting gate and home.
Resting my chin on my rake, I let my gaze travel forward,
follow my darling hunting for the latest throw.
Her nose close to the ground, her tail a slow and steady wag,
she zigzags in wild patterns until a whiff makes her turn and zero in.
I think of iron filings, how they align along magnetic lines,
make visible the enfolding forces.

Neither Stalling Nor Waiting

We shuffle, ankle-deep,
through the recently dropped
dresses of the big-leaf maples,
their luminous yolk-yellow
still untarnished by brown
age-spots, are taken back
to bygone falls, when we scooped
such bounty with both arms,
then, dancing on small feet,
threw the leaves to the wind,
watched them sail capriciously
like delicate swallowtails who will soon
let go of their short, but glorious lives.

Out in this splendor, where
the sun gilds the gold,
having found a new entry
through already bare branches
—vertical blinds pulled open
to a rare and vibrant jewel blue—
we inhale the fresh, musty
emanations of the still moist leaf-mold,
and, pausing on our favorite bench,
throw a stick to the dog,
for whom only the chase matters,
who runs with equal excitement
up or down the trail.

My legs dangle like a six-year-old’s
from this slightly-too-high seat;
we sit close, share a shopping bag
to protect our aging bodies from the cool,
damp wood, here next to Plunket Creek
reawakened by the recent rain.
It tumbles head over heels
down the narrow canyon, sounds
a base accompaniment
to the dog’s occasional calls,
as we talk of times past
and trips to come. Neither
of us ready to move on.

Brigitte Goetze lives in Western Oregon. A retired biologist and goat farmer, she now divides her time between writing and fiber work. Links to recent publications can be found at: brigittegoetzewriter.com.

Deafness

on Sundays they come
rounding off hours
plucking out minutes
like string left in a drawer

conscience stirs
as babies cry
words float
in the blues and greens
beside bowed heads

passion and guilt are separated
only by the passage of time

atonement
is wrung from the neck of Sunday’s dinner

Fairy Tales I Tell Myself In the Dark

1.
Gathering acorns
she writes recipes
on her hands
wishing them into cupboards
opening cans of beans
smelling her trouble
fisting lies tightly
filing envelopes by color

she takes no other notes
her lights blink slowly
blanketing thought’s ceiling
tracking fear into long envelopes
as she looks for stories lost
amid the weeds.

2.
You stayed where i put you
a knight on a pawn’s space
i believed in fairy tales then

When i learned your name
i fumbled toward something new
hoping that a left turn could bring me
to a street i knew
at the stroke of midnight
shoe in hand
to tell you all the plots i could recall.

3.
Axes fall in starlit woods
felling trees indiscriminately
splintering stocks
poisoning their sap
filling each
with the rounded tongues
of rabbits unable to escape.

Audrey Howitt is a recovering attorney, licensed psychotherapist, opera singer and teacher and sometimes, a poet.  Here is a link to her poetry blog: https://audreyhowittpoetry.blogspot.com/

Everything

When the river rose that year, we were beside it
and ourselves with fear; not that it would do anything
to us, mind you—our hopes were much too high for that—
but there was always that remote, unacknowledged possibility
that we had thrown one stone too many, by the handful,
and that by some force of nature, as they called it,
it might rain and rain for days, as it had been,
with nothing to hold it and the structure back,
and with everything to blame, including children
on into late summer and all the years ahead,
when it would be ours to bear, to do much more with
than remember and let it go at that—some mud,
some driftwood, some space of sky as a reminder
before getting on with the world again;
no, the balance was ours to share, and responsibility
for rivers had as much to do with anything
as rain on the roof and sweet fish for supper,
as forests and trembling and berries at sunrise;
thus it was, then, that we kept our watch,
that we kept our wits about us and all the respect
we could muster, sitting in silence,
sleeping in shifts, and when the fire died,
everyone was there to keep it alive;
somehow, though, in the middle of the night,
despite our vigils, our dreams, our admonitions,
our structure, our people, and all our belongings
broke free with a shudder and went drifting away—
past the landing, the swing, the anchored cages,
down through the haunted rapids, never to be found;
when we awoke that morning, the sun was back,
the river had receded under our measuring stick,
and everything had been astonishingly replaced,
including people and pets, the structure intact,
but in the solitude of all our faces as we ate,
the knowledge was there, of what we all had done,
and that everything would never be the same.

Lawson Fusao Inada, “Everything” from Legends from Camp, copyright © 1993 by Lawson Fusao Inada. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Coffee House Press, Minnieapolis, Minnesota, www.coffeehousepress.org.

Clarissa Jakobsons, poet, artist, instructor, and book artist, was twice featured poet in Paris, France at “The Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore.” Sample publications include: Tower, The Lake, Hawaii Pacific Review, Glint Literary Journal, Cave Moon Press, Ruminate, Qarrtsiluni, and Ascent Aspirations. Jakobsons recently enjoyed an artist residency at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center.

  Human in Nature