Wendy Videlock
The Owl
Beneath her nest
a shrew’s head,
a finch’s beak
and the bones
of a quail attest
the owl devours
the hour,
and disregards
the rest.
Originally published in Poetry
Also appears in Wendy's chapbook
"What's that supposed to mean"
- available from Exot Books
Reproduced with the author's permission
Rose Kelleher
Love Sonnet
The soldierness of your astronomy
so gentle hungries in my panging blue
it shivers the metal mail, unrusting you,
unresting in the owlest leaves of me.
Pitier velvets, trembler sheets of glass,
more forest bloods, of piner hills bereft
never endeared a dawn; nor fawned a theft
with sharper slenders from more willing grass.
O fain would I elfing go, and bladeful sleep
amid the winter-bell’s unthroated soft,
never to sweet again your ladly cry,
if bellward be your summer’s lively-keep;
and wolfen salt that cheeks your lash aloft
were petal-dreamt upon the elfer’s eye.
From "Bundle o' Tinder" - published by Waywiser Press
Reproduced with the author's permission
Seree Zohar
For Rest
I know those drops of rain, and they know me
the slinky fall, the violent falling
coming, leaving
flimsy
wristed
leaves
open
palmed
playing
catch
the path
through the forest slipping
in
slipping
on
my feet slipped deep to hold
and stay
to rest
staying
for rest
forever
or for the eve
I could hear leaves teaching
but there arose a disparate wind that wound then rose round about
wended a way
through the vert hold
wounded the leaves
touching the open the open slipping away
fallen
now into this
sleeping
new to me
Reproduced with the author's permission
Janet Kenny
Sightlines
(Sydney painter, Lloyd Rees)
Old architect and draftsman had in hand
and eye the stretch of light and line,
the taut,
the tight, the free, the deep. And so the grand
old man did not fear blindness as he sought
the elements that bound him to the earth.
Beneath his tennis shade he drew it in,
the saturated harbour that was worth
a thousand views of Venice.
With his thin
sun-weathered fingers he allowed his skill
to lead his fading eyes into the glare
forbidden by his doctor.
Only will
could re-ignite his vision. He stared down
the sun that splashed the water in his mind
and dived deep in the light he knew would drown
his reason with the sight that made him blind
Originally published in The Flea
Reproduced with the author's permission
Jesse Anger
The Spirit Fisher
A Heron in the rushes
spreads his slow blue wings
which sound out in the air
like match-struck gasoline.
My bone voices go whispering—
that Heron in the rushes
is wisdom wading shallows
round the river’s edge.
An Onondagan choir
sings octaves in my blood.
The Heron, in a rush
of windless stirring, up above;
the spirit fisher drives
the dry-brushed pastel dusk,
the drummers’ voices higher.
Herons never rush.
Reproduced with the author's permission
Karen Kelsay
The Courtship Hour
I love the hour that hangs its weightless haze
of yawn across my bed. An ivory wrap
of humming stillness, spectral dance embossed
in thimble-light. I love the wentletrap
of thoughts and gurgled chants that twist before
white shoals of sleep. The bend and blur of night,
with loveliness and brokenness inside
soft vagaries that pivot in the light.
I love the hour subservient to dreams,
when day's satiety leaves remnant sky;
and all beheaded moments shed their wings
into a hushed reluctance as they die.
Reproduced with the author's permission
and by courtesy of Punkin House Press
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