A Natural Petition

When cats go to Heaven

they rearrange the order.

First, who made God, God?

Who decided angels didn’t

need fur, tails and whiskers?

Consider tail as a talking point.

Consider tail as a tour guide.

Consider tail conversational mapping.

But whiskers — ah, they let you

nuzzle a nuzzle. Soft, sexy.

Whiskers are out there

antennae catching vibes.

Whiskers are words

translated into touch.

Fur. . . the grandest of all.

One is always dressed for any

occasion.  Every occasion.

Tuxedo, calico, Bengal, leopard,

Persian. Fur is what the world

would wear if it could.

— Ruth Moose

Hawk

Driving to work, I spotted

the red-tailed hawk perched on the stop sign

at the corner of Courtland & Adams.

Surveying the suburban yards

for his next meal, he looked in my direction,

then turned away, disinterested. 

I lowered my eyes to check the time

and when I looked up again he was gone,

leaving me alone in the warm comfort of my car,

delighted by what I’d seen,

desperate for his return.

—Steve Cushman

Grievance

The winter wind is searching for a love

To love her like one loves the fall,

spring, summer, seasons better thought of

Than her silent biting chill, her pall.

Forgotten, crystal blooms on bare-branched trees,

Crisping air that skates on glassy lakes

Wakes the spirit, opens sleepy lungs to breathe

While snowflakes choose their own design to make.

Now she hisses sleet through blizzard teeth,

Love me for who I am and what I bring.

There is no resurrection without death,

Without a sleep, no dreams, no notes to sing.

Hear my lonely recitative,

Say you love me. Say it to me, please.

— Sarah Edwards

Wintry Mix

Without warning, you alter my day —

wanting more firewood before

it becomes soggier with morning snow.

I see no reason to disembark the sofa.

Horizontal before the fireplace,

I offer you a quilt that needs no tinder —

but your posture is stern and straight.

Rising, I moan like only I can, still unconvinced.

Children sled outside, asphalt’s black spine

revealed with each pass, down the block where

we sometimes stroll comfortable evenings,

or other everyday occasions when we leave,

yet return. Warm in a wool scarf I gave you,

you emerge smiling, extending leather gloves

to fend off spiders and splinters, and seize

some oak, encouraging me to hurry inside.

— Sam Barbee

from That Rain We Nee30

The Gray and the Brown

All morning long the gray and the brown

lower their tapered heads, nibble

 

grass covered in mud from a recent rain.

It is warm for winter, but horses know

 

nothing of seasons save the sun

is a weightless rider and needs no saddle.

 

Come noon, they canter around the field

in tandem, carrying

 

nothing but light. Then they halt

like a horse and its shadow, motionless

 

as Paleolithic paintings in a cave —

a moment so fleeting and perfect, clouds

 

form in the shape of horses, gallop across

the sky in homage.

—Terri Kirby Erickson

Poem

BIRD FEEDER

I never said

we weren’t sunk in glittering nature,

until we are able to become something else.

— Mary Oliver

Perches pique a matter of strategic

challenges, this chess game of

poached positions and rotating

flurries of chromatic energy,

as if the flash and dash of feathers

in flight was more about the dance

and not the flush of necessity’s plight . . .

as if we ourselves were not also

in restless rush, breathing out

the flux and plottings of our small

and uncertain profundities.

— Connie Ralston

Recurring Dream

I stumble from a ladder,

mis-stepping through a rung —

preoccupied, peering up

to some lofty destination,

a change of venue for star-gazing.

During the thrill of ascension,

I loosen my grip, testing

if some trinity might rescue me.

And I fall, dream after dream,

each time I reach the REM —

stratum by stratum, through ice crystals.

Snagged in the belly of combed clouds

I release all I am into wind

free-falling as a piano tinkles

a light-hearted etude.

— Sam Barbee

Hole In the Sky

Nothing, or nearly so,

These thin molecules of air,

Water vapor collected

So high it’s crystallized,

The ice of a cirrus cloud

Lit by reflected light

And the slant of evening sun

Rendering this whole blue nothing

Something.

Then the hand, old, instinctively wise,

Darting across toned paper,

The scratch, scratch of a pastel . . .

There! Do you see it?

A hole in the sky!

Sometimes,

If we push hard

Against the skin of the world,

It will give enough

To allow us a moment, nearly nothing,

Maybe, but something,

Even if it’s just a hole in the sky

That calls us to remember,

Then shows us

Why we do what we do.

—Bob Wickless

When Honeybees Were Everywhere

Once, honeybees covered the clover-carpeted

ground, their steady hum linked so closely

with the clovers’ heavy heads and thread-like

stems it could have been, instead, the language

of these fragrant flowers — perhaps what they

whispered to one another in the early morning

light on a summer day as the barefoot children

burst from their houses and the dogs began

to bark and the milkman with his thick-soled

boots tromped through the yards, and mothers

dragged their laundry baskets across the grass

while bees scattered and the clover, briefly

trampled, rose again — their pale, dew-damp

faces poised to receive the bees’ next kiss.

– Terri Kirby Erickson