Poem May 2023

Poem May 2023

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Mallard Ducks

It is late afternoon and a pair

of mallard ducks is paddling

the length and breadth of Lake

Katharine, their webbed feet

working beneath the waterline.

The male’s hunter green head

is iridescent in the sun, his bill

the bright yellow of summer

squash. But a female is harder

to see. Her mottled, brunette

feathers blend with the aquatic

vegetation, which will help her

protect the nest she has yet to

build, the eggs she has not yet

lain. Today, however, this hen

seems content to bob for plants

and small fish while swimming

around the lake with her mate,

the two of them silent as rubber

ducks floating in a child’s bath —

or an old married couple eating

their supper on separate trays.

— Terri Kirby Erickson

Terri Kirby Erickson’s seventh book of poetry, Night Talks: New & Selected Poems, will be released in October 2023.

Poem April 2023

Poem April 2023

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Farmlife

If I were a farmer now

I would name my hoe Samson

to move the dirt near my cow

 

that moos the meadow for nose

discharges worthy of respect,

some lows with lots of excesses

 

pouring like rain flattery cannot know

so thin and bare when we wag our tails

and say Nature’s cruel enough to please

 

any milker named Grace

or Paul or Brown.

May pings of milk stream

 

into the bucket between knees.

The cow chews her cud

with contentment of a Christian without honor

 

or the noise from the garden my mother tends.

Discretion is the council of remembrance.

Sometimes a tower is by itself a watch.

 

If needs be, grant mercy,

then climb to the top,

a mile from the dirt.

—  Shelby Stephenson

Shelby Stephenson was North Carolina’s ninth poet laureate.

Poem March 2023

Poem March 2023

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Ice Cream Parlor

The woman has a gold stud through her tongue,

her companion a snarling tiger tattooed on his neck.

They hover over cups of Crazy Vanilla and Chunky

Chocolate as she describes the final scene from an old

Tom Hanks movie in which a single white feather is

lifted on a breeze to float gently through the universe.

“It’s symbolic of death and rebirth,” she says,

and claims the movie’s protagonist is dying

as he sits on a bench pondering his young son’s

passage into tomorrow. The woman with the studded

tongue says the feather’s random motion is evocative

of fate and free will and that we are all reborn

with our final breath, our souls gently ascending.

The man with the tiger tattoo sees it differently:

“Sometimes,” he says, “you’re just full of it.”

And there, in the sumptuous clamor of the ice

cream parlor, you become aware of a cold certainty

that has nothing to do with feathers or movies

or tattoos or tasty confections or the clear blue sky

or the universe about which the stud-tongued woman

is so emphatic on this spring morning when you

are again reminded that for every bright romantic

notion there’s a spiteful truth that will crush it.

—  Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith’s Beguiled by the Frailties of Those Who Precede Us will be published this spring by Kelsay Books.

Poem February 2023

Poem February 2023

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spring and some

the woman coming toward me

wears a red cape. she smiles

she likes my red hat and

she says so. the temperature

is dropping rapidly, the wind

is rising. they had predicted

rain and possibly snow; i

had not believed them. still

my red hat threatens to

blow away and her red cape

swirls about her. she says

i like your red hat, i smile

and say i like your red cape.

spring is coming by the

calendar, a red letter day,

but this day the temperature

drops, the wind blows up,

rain and possibly snow loom,

and we pass. red hat. red cape.

        —  joel oppenheimer

Poem January 2023

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Talking in the Dark

Talking in the dark can be a way to begin

falling in love or becoming friends

again after a difficult day

in summer when late light walks away,

when the kitchen knives splayed on the table

hold galaxies that remind us to be playful

despite the sharp edges that the sun showed us.

Paired in the dark, in passion, night knows us

in ways we don’t know ourselves.

Something in us — coded into our cells? —

goes back to the time of sleeping in caves

when words were made to be believed,

where the walls were painted for dreams, for magic,

for hunts with spears, daggers, and hatchets.

The people on the walls are working together.

They have no anger. They have only hunger.

—  Paul Jones

Paul Jones’ most recent book is Something Wonderful.

Poem

Chime

We were birds then

at thirteen, a chime

of wrens chirping,

carbonated goddesses

blowing bubbles,

spilling secrets,

dancing the latest dances,

we did each others’ hair,

practiced kissing,

gossiped (a girl’s

first step toward insight),

we shook the magic eight ball,

could not imagine

a path toward our future —

we only knew we didn’t want

our mothers’ lives,

taking dictation,

cleaning up messes,

hiding tins of money,

we were angels falling,

wingless, trusting

the wind to lift

our bodies of light

far above the silver

water tower,

to let us down kindly

somewhere, anywhere

wild and broad and new.

— Debra Kaufman

Debra Kaufman’s latest collection of poetry is God Shattered.

Poem

Stairs at Weymouth

In that haunted writer’s retreat

in Southern Pines

a spiral staircase descended

from the ceiling.

No, it wasn’t a dream.

I opened my eyes 

and the corded spiral

appeared. I waited

for a ghost to show,

or a voice to whisper.

Dark hours I stared,

until early light spilled

into the room, erased 

the vision.

Today I wonder 

if I had it all wrong;

maybe those stairs

were waiting for me

to climb up.

— Maureen Sherbondy

(From Eulogy for an Imperfect Man)

Poem

Cardinal

Like a spot of blood against the blue sky,

a Cardinal perches on the shepherd’s hook

where I hang suet and a cylinder of seed-feeders

I gave Sylvia for her last Mother’s Day.

The birds are a gift to me now. Her beautiful

ashes fill a marble blue urn and rest

near one of her crazy quilts in the foyer to welcome visitors.

Buddha is there on a table and guards her keepsakes,

a cleaned-out bookshelf holds her high school portrait,

a cross-stitch she made for me. Every little corner

has its memory of how short a sweet life can be.

— Marty Silverthorne

From Collected Poems of Marty Silverthorne

Poem

Evensong

At opposite ends of the feeder,

dangling from the buckeye

by a sliver of jute,

a cardinal and indigo bunting

feed, seemingly oblivious

to the blue and scarlet other,

their self-absorption

an ongoing evolutionary tick

completed this very instant.

Birdseed falls into the tall grass

under the tree.

The cardinal flies off,

upsetting the feeder’s ballast.

It sways, wildly

at first, then less

and then less until less,

like a hypnotist’s gold watch,

while the bunting,

fading by degrees

into the falling blue spell

of evening remains

perfectly still.

— Joseph Bathanti

Joseph Bathanti served as North Carolina’s poet laureate 2012-2014. His most recent book is Light at the Seam.

Poem

Diving for the Anchor

When you were my living father, I thought of you as you,

alone. Now that you’re long dead, I think of you and me

as us, together, not that we were closer than most

fathers and sons who can’t say what should be said,

the unspoken words between them a great gauzy silence

ever after, as on the moonless night we fished the

Miles River, a tributary of the Chesapeake, skidding our

johnboat into an early autumn’s slacking, our fishing

rods angled on the gunnels. Nettles billowed the pilings,

cottonwood and locust sapped the brackish air as

the lulling water swirled us into an outgoing tide,

tugging us midstream where you tossed the anchor

overboard and heard it splash, no chain securing

it to the boat, the lead shank long gone in deep water.

 

“We’ve lost the damn anchor!” you swore to high

heaven, and as the outwash eddied us bayward you

stripped off your shirt, shoes, and shorts and dove in,

roiling the dark water to gulp you under into perfect oblivion,

leaving the child I was alone with night sounds — a screaky

covert of moorhens, cicada crescendos, the coo and stutter

of a cormorant — and I knew, at that moment, you were

the bravest man who ever lived. I could feel your fingers

probing the busted soda bottles, tangled tackle, and rusting

beer cans, groping amid the grass eels, hogfish, and bristle

worms. I held the longest breath I’d ever held and prayed,

prayed, for your deliverance, and mine. And sure enough

the surface riffled, the waters parted, and you burst

foaming into still air, anchor in hand, and clacked it

onto the sloshing deck, pulling yourself free of the current,

your body slick with river slime, and grasping the oarlock,

rolled into the rocking boat.

 

I sighed my only true sigh, longing for the wisdom

you’d dredged from the foulest netherworld, testimony

that life is more than the taking in and letting out

of breath by a father and son adrift beneath a thin haze

of stars. Having plumbed dead bottom, you’d been

resurrected to impart a consoling truth, a glistening

coin I could tuck in the pocket of memory. You obliged:

“Wish I had a nickel,” you said, “for every kid who’s

pissed in this river.”

— Stephen E. Smith

Stephen E. Smith’s most recent book is A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths.