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