New Poem in the Rockvale Review
My deep thanks to Sandy Coomer, founding editor of the Rockvale Review for publishing my poem “Bloom.” From their website:
The Blue Jay
Five finches idle
on the rim of the birdbath.
One preens a shoulder, feigns disinterest.
Another dips his beak, takes a quick sip.
Two lift from the edge but only swap perches.
A red chested male finally takes the plunge
and jumps right back out.
The others eye him, step aside in respect.
They wait to see who’s next.
A blue jay, impatient,
swoops down from above,
tearing leaves, scattering the finches.
It lands on the bath, looks around,
throws itself into the bowl, flapping and splashing,
hurling water on the ground below,
then rising into the tree to shake off the drops,
before crashing down again, and again,
bound to a bottomless joy.
Ardor in the Outback
Once again, deep thanks to editor Corey Cook of Red Eft Review for publishing my poem Ardor in the Outback.
“Red Eft Review is an online publication dedicated to accessible poetry. My goal is to post a poem a day. In the meantime, poems will be posted as they are accepted.”
–Corey Cook
Atoms
Cells die, but not the hundred trillion atoms
within each one–they’ve been around
since the stars were born and will be here ever after.
Even a body gone up in smoke does not lose a single atom.
Skin, blood, bones turn to water, gas, minerals.
So widely are atoms recycled that a billion of our own
once belonged to Shakespeare.
Knowing this helps.
Now that you are gone
you could be anywhere:
inside a red maple leaf,
or the twitching tail of a tadpole,
in the taste of a honeydew melon,
in the sigh of a thousand strangers,
in the hollow you left within my arms.
This poem was originally published by Minnow Literary Review.
Today’s Poem in Red Eft Review
Once again, many thanks to editor Corey Cook for publishing “Things I Keep From My Wife” in Red Eft Review. I am honored to be part of this fine journal.
The Cost
You came to me in a dream,
as the dead sometimes do,
and my joy rushed out to meet you.
I remember how your brown eyes held me
while, finally have the chance,
I said what I needed to say.
I must have looked away,
given you just enough time
to leave me.
I knew that you had died again
and that the cost was fair.
New Poem in Star 82 Review
Many thanks to editor Alisa Golden for publishing “A Christmas Poem” in the new issue of Star 82 Review.
“Star 82 Review is an independent art and literature, online and print magazine that highlights words and images in gemlike forms. Each issue features flash fiction, creative nonfiction, erasure texts, narrative art, postcard lit and poetic storytelling featuring subtle humor, humility and humanity, the strange and the familiar, and hope.”
Write A Letter
Write a letter to your younger self,
they urge: It’s cathartic.
Be kind, be supportive,
guide her gently toward better choices.
Fat chance she’d listen.
Pearls of wisdom, cautionary tales–she heard them all.
And what, precisely, to offer?
Don’t settle? Don’t worry? Stay out of the sun?
I wouldn’t listen to me either.
If I took another tack,
told her she was strong
and worthy, capable of anything,
she’d only shrug and look away.
Not for a minute would she have imagined
a soft landing in her sixties,
four-bed/two bath, a steadfast spouse.
In any case, who am I to interfere–
she got me this far, didn’t she?
Better to leave her hurtling
into plight and fervor and folly
so that she can show up here
and astonish me.
“See?” she would have said.
New Poem in Red Eft Review
Many thanks to editor Corey Cook for publishing my poem “Terminal Lucidity” in today’s issue of Red Eft Review. Red Eft Review is an online journal dedicated to featuring accessible poetry for a universal audience.
Lichen
Bonded to a boulder,
living on air and random rain,
a forty-year-old lichen
claims a thumbprint of space.
Centuries from now it will be
the size of a dinner plate,
will still be young
when the millennium turns–
not that age applies
to a thing designed to override death.
Maybe this doesn’t sound
like much of a life:
stuck on stone, nothing to do
but make more crust.
Or maybe it’s a thrill a minute,
living up to all that potential.
I would like to find out,
to lie on a sun-warmed rock
and give myself up,
to become with steady assurance
all I was ever meant to be.
Jean Ryan 