After Shunning
-for the *Treuherzigen
by
Mark Wacome Stevick
i.
The footprints I follow to my door
are mine, and the clutter on the table.
This poem is wrong, because I
have been straightening up for months.
Today when I woke, the air held
the packed silence of snow.
If you came tonight, out of the dark,
snow would slide from my roof.
ii.
Pines on a February afternoon.
Is this enough?—the salt-white road, the half-
hearted walls piled with cinders, a few leaves
leaping up. No one has been kissed, nothing
written. Between towns, an ocean glimpse
is aqua-marine, extravagant. Leaves
leap up. There is water, and sky, then just this
wide light on the needles beneath the pines.
iii.
These roads again, empty, winding past places
I have visited often, though not recently:
the frozen shipyard; the fish house, shuttered up;
the burial ground, still swallowing itself.
Downtown, February snow dozes on doorsteps,
but the avenues here are salt-dry, and rows
of whitewashed houses are remembering the sun.
Every sunlit clapboard is a pang.
“After Shunning” p. 2
iv.
In the wood duck’s wake the cypress dimples;
red-winged blackbirds are thrilling the cattails;
wind or waterwaders ripple the doubled shore;
so what if bass make their unfathomed rounds
or if the moth scribbles his erratic map:
the beaver’s tail is the mad slap of hope.
v.
This October woman crossing a stubbled field,
her hair black and her daughter blowing,
her hair blacker far than the stripped limbs;
who, when she looks up in that field to ask,
(her hair black as crow, blacker yet) who would not
furnish her from his breast one fire-tipped cigarette?
vi.
Civility rises as this birch
lifts its face, and stretches.
There is remembrance in these limbs,
of wind, and rain, and mute kisses.
All the gestures of the branches say
the gifts I bring must be refused.
Let this tree be dressed as light allows;
let it be white amid dark boughs.
*The Treuherzigen — literally, the "truehearted" people—were members of European state churches yet who sympathized with the Anabaptists and harbored them during persecutions.
BIO:
MARK WACOME STEVICK teaches creative writing and literature at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, and has written and published both poetry and plays. His poems have recently appeared in Literal Latte, Swink, Wild Plum, The Baltimore Review, and Blind Man's Rainbow.
MOTIVATION:
I grew up in Lancaster, PA where shunning is still practiced among the Amish.
Journey
(Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight)
by
BIO:
ANNE BRYANT-HAMON has adored poetry since childhood. She teaches Language Arts and makes her home in Lynn Haven, FL with her husband David and their children. Anne has been published in both print and on-line poetry journals such as Bumbershoot, Lucid Rhythms, 2River View, Yggdrazil, Amazonian Mists, The Green Tricycle, , Embracing the Child, Poetic Express, and others.
MOTIVATION:
This poem is an expression of my heart's desire to walk in love and at peace with people in a world where there is so much hatred and war. It's an expression of my deep desire to see people be made free from fear and anxiety and negativity. It is a call to unity in love to whoever will receive it.
Place Of Warm Earth
by
Jo Anne Richardson
I come from a place of warm earth
where, on any given summer day
or for that matter, any given day at all
you can play in the backyard, and when you fall down laughing
after missing the ball your sister has thrown
bury your naked toes deep into the dirt,
in the spot where the grass has worn thin,
so as to feel the warmth of the soil as it squishes between your toes.
Then, when a lizard scampers by on the pile of leaves behind you
you can run inside, squealing to your Mama who stands at the stove
cooking supper
musses your hair and says “Don’t worry, that big old lizard won’t get you,
and besides, Daddy will be home soon to look after us all.”
I live now in a place of cold earth
where, even on a summer day
burying your toes deep into the ground
forces them headlong into the rocks and hard earth
that the mountainous glaciers left behind.
Still, when I sit at a kitchen table in
laughing with friends
a bottle of wine before us
I feel the warmth come up through my toes and I realize
that what I feel now
and what I felt then
wasn’t the earth at all
but Home.
BIO:
JO ANNE RICHARDSON is a poet, novelist, and freelance writer in Seattle, WA. Jo Anne's poetry has been published in print and online publications such as the Kudzu Review and the Seattle Writergrrls zine, Uncapped. Her previous awards include the Cody Harris Allen writing award for poetry at Florida State University.
MOTIVATION:
"I like to write about every day experiences, small snippets of life that have universal meaning. In this poem, I was trying to convey that "home" means different things at different phases in life."
RED HOT MAGAM FALLING UP
by
Night black look—airplane’s pilot sat us here
Streaming red-orange jet’s up—atmosphere
As we pass right side of the plane look down
Molten lava falls up—waterfall town’s
Not asleep—it’s darker than midnight hours
Lava falls up hundreds of feet—towers!
One rises up—families are like columns
Plane riders are silent, soundless. Solemn—
Gushing
Red rushing, falling up here we are sage
Anti gravity not out of this world
Royal Gardens what's worse- lava or thugs?
Wooden couldn’t stop staring tiki mugs!
At Kalapana whiskey spat-fuss-clear
Shattered at Madame Pele—rat-cuss dears
Leave your heads alone—don’t you whiskey frown!
Pele’s fire took houses not crowns!