Winter Solstice
The sun through branches lights
my face. I look through
my eyelashes: prisms.
I close my eyes,
the field glows
warm carmine.
No snow, no
promise of snow.
A crow bark-laughs.
Another clatters its beak like castanets.
Their chatter perhaps
of pecans aplenty
or the simple mad joy
of being alive
in this moment.
It is easy
to love
what is passing.
Debra Kaufman
He looked like an old man hunkered down
in a faded blue overcoat, his collar turned up,
shoulders hunched. He didn’t seem bothered
by the shallow water his feet were covered
by, nor the chill winter air blowing around
his bare pate. But then his narrow head rose
like a periscope, higher and higher — swiveled
in the direction of a hardly perceptible splash.
Slowly, he moved toward the sound on legs
as skinny as walking sticks, to the place where
dinner was served and eaten so fast, any cook
would wonder if he tasted it. It was enough,
however, to restore his quiet contemplations.
Hunger sated, he curled his long neck into its
warm collar, and stood as still as a painting
while the sun sank and the snow moon kept
rising like a white balloon over the darkening
lake, the stark tree branches, and a lone heron
blending, bit by bit, into the blue light of dusk.
— Terri Kirby Erickson
The Doorman at the
Washington Hilton
Regal in his red cap and Nehru tunic,
he summons with a silver whistle,
depended from a silver tassel
around his neck,
a taxi for Jacob,
our first-born –
mere minutes to make his train
to Philadelphia, then another
to New York, and the plane
to Dubai, then Zambia.
How can it be that you raise children
for the world and they rush off to it,
places and people you’ll never see.
Is that your son, the doorman asks.
When I am unable to answer,
he tells me of his son, in Iraq,
his fear of the telephone
he can’t bear to answer.
All week, this man has held doors for me,
hailed cabs,
smiled as if he did not have such a son.
— Joseph Bathanti
Toes taste water
before it swallows
our bodies.
In a waterfall embrace—
bones brush against
mossy boulders.
Our skin succumbs
to unknown atoms
when the wild decides
where we fall in.
The flow that washed away our sins
is saving someone else by now.
Miles away—
neck deep
in a faith pool,
we hold our breath
to float above
rock bottom.
— Clint Bowman
Clint Bowman’s debut full-length collection of poetry, If Lost, will be published September 5 by Loblolly Press.
A lone tree fell in my woods
But it didn’t hit the ground
Or make that debated sound
It fell into the steadfast embrace
of another tree
With its outstretched branches free
They lean into each other
The broken and the strong
The living and the gone
It’s only with a passing breeze
And a creaking, crying bough
That they make sure we hear them now
— Kayla Stuhr
Kayla Stuhr is a Scottish visual artist, writer, and award-winning filmmaker.
They don’t so much sing as plead
In their droning sound stampede.
I hope they find the love they need —
Something more than meet-and-breed.
Can that even be with insects —
To have sensations beyond touch?
Do they know joy as well as sex?
They don’t so much.
— Paul Jones
Paul Jones is a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of the collection Something Wonderful.
Feature Photograph: Courtesy Tufts Archives
(On receiving a picture of this famous
golf architect studying a 6-foot putt)
Brave Donald, in your suit of brown,
I see you studying your putt,
And well I know you’ll run it down;
It is a splendid picture, but
For all the woes you’ve worked for me,
Deep in a bunker you should be.
I smile to see your kindly eye;
’Tis good to see your figure fair;
Six feet away, I’ll say you lie,
And know your second put your there;
They took your picture on the green —
A pit had made a merrier scene.
I should have laughed to see you caught,
Your niblick tightly clutched in hand,
Standing where I so oft have fought
To battle with the stubborn sand;
It would have pleased me more to see
Your ball where mine so oft must be.
Yet, Donald, if perchance the day
Shall come to me when I can brag
That I, like you, have learned to play
My second shots up to the flag,
If I reach any green in two
I’ll have my picture made for you.
— Edgar A. Guest
(Edgar A. Guest, 1881-1959, was known as the People’s Poet.
He wrote this poem for the testimonial dinner honoring Donald Ross at the Pinehurst County Club on March 20, 1930.)
Scrub your face with a vengeance.
Brush your teeth till your gums bleed.
Comb your hair into a pompadour, braid it
into cornrows, buzz cut a flattop with side skirts,
spit-paste that cowlick to your forehead.
That’s how it begins, this becoming who you aren’t.
A twitch or tic or two you may inherit, but the face
in the mirror you recognized only once
before you’re beguiled by the frailties of those who
precede you — your wayward Aunt Amelia,
the lying politician, tongue flickering through his false
teeth, the long-legged temptress slyly sipping a latté
at the corner coffee shop, your scapegrace
one-eyed Uncle Bill — all of them competing
for your attention, all of them wanting you to become
who they believed they were going to be.
Between intention and action, take a deep breath
and welcome the moment you become who you aren’t.
Slap on Uncle Bill’s black eye patch,
stuff those willful curls under Aunt Amelia’s cloche,
pluck your eyebrows, rouge your cheeks, bleach
those teeth whiter than light: then stare deep into
the reflection behind the mirror: who you’ve become
will trouble you, even if you shut your eyes.
— Stephen E. Smith
Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. His memoir The Year We Danced is being released this month by Apprentice House Press.
My father taught me a civil trick.
If you get caught during a rainstorm
at a downtown restaurant, just ask
the bartender if someone left a black umbrella. They will present you with
a cardboard box chock full of them.
It is not a lie: Someone really has left behind each one. You have left many. Part of the loophole is to make sure to give that umbrella to someone who needs it, or at the very least, leave it
in a shady vestibule, on the coat rack next to that sad windbreaker. Otherwise it doesn’t count. Now they could call this all a life hack, but I consider that lacking. The process of inheritance is about so much more than getting what you need.
— Maura Way
Maura Way’s second collection of poetry, Mummery,
was published in November 2023 by Press 53.
In christening gown and bonnet,
he is white and stoic as the moon,
unflinching as the sun burns
through yellow puffs of pine
pollen gathered at his crown
while I pour onto his forehead
from a tiny blue Chinese rice cup
holy water blessed
by John Paul II himself
and say, “I baptize you, Julian Joseph,
in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.”
Nor does he stir when the monarchs
and swallowtails,
in ecclesiastical vestments,
lift from the purple brushes
of the butterfly bush
and light upon him.
— Joseph Bathanti
Joseph Bathanti was the North Carolina poet laureate from 2012-2014. He will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in October.
