Lee Evans
To Begin or End With
The scene was set when time was but a clock;
When age and care were wrinkles on a dress
Soon ironed out and hung with Sunday’s best.
A mother and her infant son were blocked
Inside a camera, all their color struck
By black-and-white, the Kodak’s yang and yin.
He beams at her, and she reflects to him
The glory of their youth, which Time will mock.
From such a glad beginning, see what looms:
The parent curled and crumbling like a leaf
That drifts upon a pond one winter’s day;
The child beside the bed, bent down with grief,
Himself the aging image of her clay:
The door of birth leads to and from the tomb.
Van Gogh’s Van Goghs
The flowers of the sun and other stars
Blaze forth from Vincent’s canvases, and draw
Admirers of his vision with his broad
And pantheistic strokes of ardor. Scarred
With passion’s force, he tortured, bent and gnarled
The fields and faces that his paint described,
With single-mindedness such as contrived
To twist the course of Nature to his harm.
Those seizures–were they worth it? Were they due,
That he should gain his soul and lose the world?
No Art is worth that sacrifice. Death whirled
Within his psyche, with the jagged hues
Of a kaleidoscope or fireworks, and hurled
Into his heart the bullet that it drew.
M.J. De Angelis
Soaring
I am the drop that rises in the rain,
the only one to fall if there is sun,
the blossom floating on a sea of grain.
Should others walk, then count on me to run.
I am the hinge that creaks upon the barn,
the vane that turns to any wind around.
I am the one who’s spinning one last yarn
and tending fire for others sleeping sound.
I am the clock that chimes without its hands,
the one the hatter toasts while having tea.
While others rest I am the one who stands
and heads to tasks not done. Yes, that is me.
I am a kite. I have let go the string
to find the lightning and hear thunder sing.
Colleen McKee
In Defense of Shitwork
The getting and losing are easy to write.
How elegant tears can look—on paper.
It’s maintenance, the measly tasks you can’t fight,
washing coffeespoons, schlepping the hamper.
Just today I sat on the stoop and scraped
dried orange bits of dogcrap from each boot—
my gorgeous motorcycle boots—my splayed
hands cracked in the dry winter sun, cold foot-
ed, and wondered, could I get a poem
out of this? Um, no, I said, this is shit,
no point, just two trashed rags. I see no end
to scrubbing nails, potatoes, carrot skins.
But then plates gleam, and stew steam fills the place.
And elbow grease is the source of all grace.
Scott Ennis
Inevitability
I tried my best, like autumn’s auburn leaves
to cling to spring or summer if I could,
but found that winter offered no reprieve
and learned that clinging doesn’t do much good.
The roots, the trunk, the branch gave up at last
and doing so they left me little choice;
their need for me was somewhere in the past
and mine for them a dry unheeded voice.
The west wind blew and shook me from my place.
The southern winds exhaled my final sighs.
The east wind was a slap across my face.
The north wind froze the teardrops in my eyes.
Then winter came without a joyful sound
and I was dead before I hit the ground.