PRAISE SONG by Barbara Crooker from Radiance Praise the light of late November, the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones. Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees; though they are clothed in night, they do not despair. Praise what little there’s left: the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls, shells, the … Read more
Leonids Over Us by Marge Piercy The sky is streaked with them burning hole in black space — like fireworks, someone says all friendly in the dark chill of Newcomb Hollow in November, friends known only by voices. We lie on the cold sand and it embraces us, this beach where locals never go in … Read more
Peace of Sonoma County © Dana HawleyThe Love of OctoberW. S. Merwin A child looking at ruins grows youngerbut coldand wants to wake to a new nameI have been younger in Octoberthan in all the months of springwalnut and may leaves the colorof shoulders at the end of summera month that has been to the … Read more
Late Meadow with Full Moon© Therese DesjardinMeadow TurfJanet Lewis (1899 – 1998) Goldenrod, strawberry leaf, small bristling aster, allLoosestrife, knife-bladed grasses, lacing their roots, lacingThe life of the meadow into a deep embraceFar underground, and all their shoots, wet at the base,With shining dew, dry-crested with sun,Springing out of a mould years old;Leaves, living and … Read more
Kopis’taya (A Gathering Of Spirits) by Paula Gunn Allen Because we live in the browning season the heavy air blocking our breath, and in this time when living is only survival, we doubt the voices that come shadowed on the air, that weave within our brains certain thoughts, a motion that is soft, imperceptible, a … Read more
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy,a quickening that is translatedthrough you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of time,this expression is unique.And if you block it, it will never exist throughany other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your … Read more
Augustby Elizabeth Maua Taylor August rushes by like desert rainfall,A flood of frenzied upheaval,Expected,But still catching me unprepared.Like a matchflameBursting on the scene,Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.Like a dreamOf moon and dark barely recalled,A moment,Shadows caught in a blink.Like a quick kiss;One wishes for moreBut it suddenly turns to leave,Dragging summer away.
Bacchusby Ralph Waldo Emerson Bring me wine, but wine which never grewIn the belly of the grape,Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching throughUnder the Andes to the Cape,Suffer no savor of the earth to scape. Let its grapes the morn saluteFrom a nocturnal root,Which feels the acrid juiceOf Styx and Erebus;And turns the woe … Read more
Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faithby Mary Oliver Every summerI listen and lookunder the sun’s brass and eveninto the moonlight, but I can’t hear anything, I can’t see anything —not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,nor the leavesdeepening their damp pleats, nor the tassels making,nor the shucks, nor … Read more
A Moment’s Indulgence from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards. Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless … Read more