Issue 13

Spring 2013

Cover Photo © 2013 “Empty nest” by Lois Elaine Heckman

Flowers bloom even though they are destined to fade, and a sparrow's nest is lovingly built even though one day it will go empty.  Whether the struggles of aging and illness or the absence of a loved one, life's challenges are often unavoidable and beyond our control.  The wisdom that accepts both the inevitability of loss and the constancy of new life can bring healing to those who are open to it.

I want to paint my hands

with every color that I see, to dip

my fingers in the garden, reach them

towards the easel sky and watch them

reinvent the clouds.

Phoebe Brown

we were base camp

guardians of snow

charted drift

and temperature

graphed hope

for Sunday night storms.

Katherine DiBella Seluja

On the verge of giving way,

we salvage what we can.

We muster the courage

to enter what is not easy,

to mine each moment

for the ore that holds

an antidote for

endings.

Elizabeth Landrum

After the last visit

to the angled bed,

after her last

shrunken hug

and wiry kiss, he

still wears the ring

and her cautions.

Stuart Freyer

all she knew

was one anxiety

the anxiety

that maybe she had never been true,

true to herself that is

Naomi Beth Wakan

In a measured dance from room to room,

she’s found confidence in restored grace

and the lingering fermata of a kiss.

David Olsen

And in brief flashes of clarity,

when I can see your synapses firing

like fireflies in a jar,

in its unwitting benevolence it reveals,

stripped-down and elemental,

the inimitable essence of your being.

Kathrin Harris