Gallery

From 18 Poets,

IDLING

Where is that singing coming from?

And is it a song of welcome or dismissal, of embracing or letting go?
Is it just wind in the trees, or birdcall?
Is it sound at all, or just the mind's playing?

DOTS AND DASHES

Enid?

Have we any messages for one another?
It's like a little ramshackle telegraph office
in the middle of the desert, here where I wait ... my fingers trying to move messages into poems.
"...stay alive and get your work done" said Papa Hemingway once. I am trying.

THE GODDESS

Why did the Goddess strike me down? How did I offend her?

I prepared for entry into her festival with flagons of crisp, almost
green, white wine that could have come from her arbors; then tried to regale her with Enid's songs of
Lilith and the Shekhina. Where did I fail her?

APPROPRIATE MARKS

The bill came early

before the fuel was spent digging
digging
digging
and it got so cold
I couldn't stop shivering long enough to hold the pen.

MY NEIGHBOR'S BEES

I wished my newest neighbor kept bees; and my newest neighbor's

bees turned and attacked him.
"Killed him?" Maybe.
Anyway, the bees have all gone to a new home where they have all their honey to themselves their entire lives long;
where flowers grow profusely,
and no beast competes for the clover. "Isn't this what you want for yourself?"