Journal

The World is Lost to Me

Ghosts brood outside my house
under redwood trees surrounding my home
outside my home their fingers gather shadows
‌                                         for the sake of dark green

In a year of afternoons, fog tethers itself to my house
Dark porch brims with light in my home
‌                                          like a throatful of tears

My son hovers in the dark stars above my home
Walls echo moment and memory in my home
‌                                          where I roam in this rain-soaked wound

House raging with zigzag lightning house
‌                                          evening dark
‌                                          rhubarb and huckleberries

House shadowed with green rain and redwoods
‌              restore my heart to me
‌              restore my mind to me
‌              restore any starlight

I live in my home with Rhubarb Boy
I live in my home with Huckleberry Girl

I live in my home where ghosts unknit our bones
‌             Where I live under shadowed trees
‌             older than anyone I have ever known

‌                         Wo Ich bin der welt abhanden gekommen

 

Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios‘ award-winning chapbook, Special Delivery, was published in 2016, her second, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble by Word Tech Communications, and her third, A Concerto for an Empty Frame: Music for Survival by Kelsay Books. Nominated three times for a pushcart prize, she has poems published in various anthologies and journals including Stories of Music, The Poeming Pigeon, The Blue Mountain Review, American Journal of Poetry, and The Inflectionist Review. She is editor of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast Anthology,and Professor Emerita from American University in Washington DC.

Sunday Afternoon in Early September

This afternoon we will have cleaning of spirits. Need brought on by the sight of myself
in the mirror. I look far gone. No dust mops, straw brooms, or old rag, and I scrub the
idea of dry martinis with three olives.

after leaf fall
on the frog pond
scum

Let’s start by sharing a picture of a cedar waxwing on a drying vine eating a raspberry
from the Audubon calendar. And sip green tea with lemon peel and ginger. No honey
in yours. I’ll tell the story of saving the life of a waxwing’s leg caught in the string on a
trellis in my garden. You may speak about short-life laptop batteries for a few minutes.
I will share predictions of rain after a morning of gloom. We will discuss drought that
is not apparent here. You may bring out your close-ups of azaleas and rhododendrons
taken during your walk to Lake Washington, the path that passes the park with the
beach for dogs that like to chase thrown-things into the water. I promise to admire the
bugs crawling in your blooms. Please tell again stories about how Newfoundlands love
to swim.

Solar output from the panels is minimal. Drizzle, not rain. I’ll talk about my mother.
The sky does not lift. The purple asters I planted yesterday in a pot seem grateful. One
hickory leaf fell with the swirl of a feather. Milkweed pods prepare to split wide open.

We sit side by side. I could not have foreseen that in this morning’s mirror. You ask if
you should read Mary Oliver out loud to me. I hold your hand. I ask for Gluck.

too early for vespers
another lamp must be lit
before solstice

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet thrilled to be coming out of this strange Vermont winter. She welcomes poetry collection #8 Wild Apples (Fernwood Press, released February 2024) about her 3,003 mile move from Oregon to Vermont along with downsizing and welcoming two grandsons. Collection #9 is The Unknown Daughter (Finishing Line Press, March 2024), a chapbook of 24 poems related to a fictional Tomb of the Unknown Daughter–each poem told by a different character who knows of the monument or the people involved. Part feminist history, part autobiography, and part fantasy. Website: triciaknoll.com

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/