Improvement

 

The optometrist says my eyes
are getting better each year.
Soon he’ll have to lower my prescription.
What’s next? The light step I had at six?
All the gray hairs back to brown?
Skin taut as a drum?

My improved eyes and I
walked around town and celebrated.

We took in the letters
of the marquee, the individual leaves
filling out the branches of the sycamore,
an early moon.

So much goes downhill: our joints
wearing out with every mile,
the delicate folds of the eardrum
exhausted from years of listening.
I’m grateful for small victories.

The way the heart still beats time
in the cathedral of the ribs.

And the mind, watching its parade of thoughts
enter and leave, begins to see them
for what they are: jugglers, fire swallowers, acrobats
tossing their batons in the air.

--Danusha Laméris

Promise

 

This day is an open road

stretching out before you.

Roll down the windows.

Step into your life, as if it were a fast car.

Even in industrial parks,

trees are covered with white blossoms,

festive as brides, and the air is soft

as a well-washed shirt on your arms.

The grass has turned implausibly green.

Tomorrow, the world will begin again,

another fresh start.  The blue sky stretches

shakes out its tent of light.  Even dandelions glitter

in the lawn, a handful of golden change.

--Barbara Crooker

How It Might Continue

 

Wherever we go, the chance for joy,
whole orchards of amazement--

one more reason to always travel

with our pockets full of exclamation marks,

so we might scatter them for others

like apple seeds.

Some will dry out, some will blow away,

but some will take root

and grow exuberant groves

filled with long thin fruits

that resemble one hand clapping__

so much enthusiasm as they flutter back and forth

that although nothing's heard

and though nothing's really changed,

people everywhere for years to come

will swear that the world

is ripe with applause, will fill

their own pockets with new seeds to scatter.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Old Friends

 

Old friends are a steady spring rain,

or late summer sunshine edging into fall,

or frosted leaves along a snowy path--

a voice for all seasons saying I know you.

The older I grow, the more I fear I'll lose my old friends,

as if too many years have scrolled by

since the day we sprang forth, seeking each other.

Old friend, I knew you before we met.

I saw you at the window of my soul--

I heard you in the steady millstone of my heart

grinding grain for our daily bread.

You are sedimentary, rock-solid cousin earth,

where I stand firmly, astonished by your grace and truth.

And gratitude comes to me and says:

"Tell me anything and I will listen.

Ask me anything, and I will answer you."

--Freya Manfred

[Our dear old friends, Susan and Daniel Jantos]

Let There Always Be Light (Searching for Dark Matter)

For this we go out dark nights, searching
For the dimmest stars,
For signs of unseen things:

To weigh us down.
To stop the universe
From rushing on and on
Into its own beyond
Till it exhausts itself and lies down cold,
Its last star going out.

Whatever they turn out to be,
Let there be swarms of them,
Enough for immortality,
Always a star where we can warm ourselves.

Let there be enough to bring it back
From its own edges,
To bring us all so close we ignite
The bright spark of resurrection.

--Rebecca Elson

To The Thawing Wind

Come with rain, O loud Southwester!

Bring the singer, bring the nester;

Give the buried flower a dream;

Make the settled snowbank steam;

Find the brown beneath the white;

But whate’er you do tonight,

Bathe my window, make it flow,

Melt it as the ice will go;

Melt the glass and leave the sticks

Like a hermit’s crucifix;

Burst into my narrow stall;

Swing the picture on the wall;

Run the rattling pages o’er;

Scatter poems on the floor;

Turn the poet out of door.

--Robert Frost