Issue 2

September 2009

Issue 2, September 2009

Often we reach out with words, hoping to find the understanding of another and offer a moment of friendship in return.  But when our experience is painful, we tend to turn inward, if only for a moment.

Healing is often not an easy art, nor its lessons met with awe or acceptance.  But when we come together and share from our recollections those penetrating memories we were given, our spirits are lifted to carry on, to look forward, and to venture freely.

She filled it with sunrise blush

and that center skip in hopscotch,

sprinkled in a somersault’s pause

and the tug from a six-pound trout line.

Sherry O’Keefe

Pain. She’s in a lot of pain.

You know what your daughter’s like after surgery.

Toni L. Wilkes

... her fingers would crawl

across the chests of those blue

babies, feeling for murmurs,

the way a butterfly’s proboscis

probes delphinium blossoms ...

James S. Wilk

... one day my muse

wore sunlight, reflecting off the freshly cut grass

where my daughter and her then best friend for ever sat.

Maria Basile

                ... each moment lived

now moves us closer to our last ...

Murray Alfredson

There is still life

to be lived

within a bed

and four walls ...

Alarie Tennille

The cardinal looked as if she had something

to say, but flew off before I could open the door.

Christine Klocek-Lim

He wants to teach her to swim through the ocean. 

He wants to build her an ark of strength and passion,

but instead they wait in the rain

and tread water.

Larina Warnock

The curve of her arm

around the still bundle

forms the last smile

she can give him.

Tina Hacker

You lie loose-leafed and loosely bound, like a book

 whose dog-eared pages hold their crease ...

Sally Houtman

And when he died

just she was there

to see the glory go.

Linda K. Marshall

He was gone.

Gone with the snapping of fingers

    into what

    and where

    and

    why?

Frank Cavano

No one knew how the fire of your flesh

Impressed its meaning into

Decades of quiet words and looks ...

Ed Bennett

Across foot printed sand, he runs,

ignites puffed pigeons. She rises, absorbs

his hug energy.

Mary Susan Clemons

... I bloom only

in the dark of night.

Within but not yet of this world ...

Kelly Grace Smith

This time you're excused, we told you.

You can leave the protest to us.

And we sat on the floor and sang.

Esther Greenleaf Mürer