The Dogs at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz: poem by Alicia Ostriker

THE DOGS AT LIVE OAK BEACH, SANTA CRUZ
by Alicia Ostriker

As if there could be a world
Of absolute innocence
In which we forget ourselves
 
The owners throw sticks
And half-bald tennis balls
Toward the surf
And the happy dogs leap after them
As if catapulted—
 
Black dogs, tan dogs,
Tubes of glorious muscle—
 
Pursuing pleasure
More than obedience
They race, skid to a halt in the wet sand,
Sometimes they’ll plunge straight into
The foaming breakers
 
Like diving birds, letting the green turbulence
Toss them, until they snap and sink
 
Teeth into floating wood
Then bound back to their owners
Shining wet, with passionate speed
For nothing,
For absolutely nothing but joy.

“The Dogs at Live Beach, Santa Cruz” appears in Alicia Ostriker’s collection The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), available at Amazon.com.

Photo: “Retriever at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz” by Christopher Matthews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Mother Ann Tells Lucy What Gave Her Joy, poem by Arra Lynn Ross

 
MOTHER ANN TELLS LUCY WHAT GAVE HER JOY
by Arra Lynn Ross

A moment of understanding
     when the face lights up
          and even the trees seem to kneel.
The mossy ground
     below a huge willow
          by the side of the marsh.
Children who come
     with white faces
          and turn pink
               in the sun.
 
The sound of sawing in the woods
          and the long lone hum
               of a boat bearing lumber
                    down the Hudson.
The sudden deer in the trees,
          a streak of white tail
               and the hoof prints
                    filling with water.
 
The sound of voices
          rounding out with grace,
               with trust.
                    And rosehip tea steaming in the sun.
How many times we threw off our shoes
          and danced together,
               the cool ground under our soles.
                    And the mud! churned by feet, and horses,
                       ox-carts and cows.
          The open throats
               and closed eyes,
                    that red ringing
                         inside my heart.
 
And mornings that Lucy sang
     making breakfast,
          snatches of hymns
               stuck together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Arra Lynn Ross grew up on a communal farm in Minnesota and attended Macalester College in Saint Paul, where she earned her BA in English. She completed her PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and currently teaches creative writing at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan. Her work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Alimentum. Ross’s poems have also been featured on Verse Daily and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. “Mother Ann Tells Lucy What Gave Her Joy” appears in her collection Seedlip and Sweet Apple (Milkweed Editions, 2010), available at Amazon.com or at Milkweed Editions.

Illustration: “The Willow Weeps,” digitally painted photo by Bonnie Bruno, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at etsy.com.

The Heart’s Green Bough, Chinese Proverb

“If I keep a green bough in my heart, then the singing bird will come.”

CHINESE PROVERB

Painting: Vintage Chinese silk painting for sale on Etsy.

Nothing to do all day and night but write, quote by John Fante

The good days, the fat days, page upon page of manuscript; prosperous days, something to say…the pages mounted and I was happy. Fabulous days, the rent paid, still fifty dollars in my wallet, nothing to do all day and night but write and think of writing; ah, such sweet days, to see it grow, to worry for it, myself, my book, my words, maybe important, maybe timeless, but mine nevertheless, the indomitable Arturo Bandini, already deep into his first novel. “

From Chapter Sixteen of Ask the Dust a novel by John Fante, originally published in 1939.

Photo: Vintage notecard found on Flickr.

Mother Ann Tells Lucy What Gave Her Joy, poem by Arra Lynn Ross

 
MOTHER ANN TELLS LUCY WHAT GAVE HER JOY
by Arra Lynn Ross

A moment of understanding
     when the face lights up
          and even the trees seem to kneel.
The mossy ground
     below a huge willow
          by the side of the marsh.
Children who come
     with white faces
          and turn pink
               in the sun.
 
The sound of sawing in the woods
          and the long lone hum
               of a boat bearing lumber
                    down the Hudson.
The sudden deer in the trees,
          a streak of white tail
               and the hoof prints
                    filling with water.
 
The sound of voices
          rounding out with grace,
               with trust.
                    And rosehip tea steaming in the sun.
How many times we threw off our shoes
          and danced together,
               the cool ground under our soles.
                    And the mud! churned by feet, and horses,
                       ox-carts and cows.
          The open throats
               and closed eyes,
                    that red ringing
                         inside my heart.
 
And mornings that Lucy sang
     making breakfast,
          snatches of hymns
               stuck together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Arra Lynn Ross grew up on a communal farm in Minnesota and attended Macalester College in Saint Paul, where she earned her BA in English. She completed her PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and currently teaches creative writing at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan. Her work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Alimentum. Ross’s poems have also been featured on Verse Daily and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. “Mother Ann Tells Lucy What Gave Her Joy” appears in her collection Seedlip and Sweet Apple (Milkweed Editions, 2010), available at Amazon.com or at Milkweed Editions.

Illustration: “The Willow Weeps,” digitally painted photo by Bonnie Bruno, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at etsy.com.

Joy, poem by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

JOY
by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

Who could need more proof than honey–
How the bees with such skill and purpose

enter flower after flower

sing their way home

to create and cap the new honey

just to get through the flowerless winter.

And how the bear with intention and cunning

raids the hive

shovels pawful after pawful into his happy mouth

bats away indignant bees

stumbles off in a stupor of satiation and stickiness.

And how we humans can’t resist its viscosity

its taste of clover and wind

its metaphorical power:

don’t we yearn for a land of milk and honey?

don’t we call our loved ones “honey?”

all because bees just do, over and over again, what they were made to do.

Oh, who could need more proof than honey

to know that our world

was meant to be

and

was meant to be

sweet?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Julie Cadawallader-Staub lives near Burlington, Vermont. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Her first collection of poems, Face to Face, was published in 2010. “Joy” and” Guinea Pig,” which Garrison Keillor read on The Writer’s Almanac, are in this collection, in addition to sixty other poems. Julie’s poem Reverence has been anthologized in Garrison Keillor’s book Good Poems: American Places. Her poetry also appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology. Visit her at juliecspoetry.com.

Sorting the Laundry, quote by E.B. White

“We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.” E.B. WHITE, Author of Charlotte’s Web

Photo: “Harpo Hiding” by Bridget Zinn, author of Poison

Joy, poem by Chris Forhan

JOY
by Chris Forhan

It seized me—never mind the circumstance: sudden
scent in the breeze like cinnamon, sun silvering
a roof as the unicycle parade began—it seized me
 
as sickness does, wholly, with no mercy,
all of my body obeisant to its law as though none of it
were mine, finally: not the joy or the body.

…”Joy” appears in the Silver Birch Press release Ransack and Dance, a collection of poems by Chris Forhan, available at Amazon.com.

The Dogs at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz: poem by Alicia Ostriker

THE DOGS AT LIVE OAK BEACH, SANTA CRUZ
by Alicia Ostriker

As if there could be a world
Of absolute innocence
In which we forget ourselves
 
The owners throw sticks
And half-bald tennis balls
Toward the surf
And the happy dogs leap after them
As if catapulted—
 
Black dogs, tan dogs,
Tubes of glorious muscle—
 
Pursuing pleasure
More than obedience
They race, skid to a halt in the wet sand,
Sometimes they’ll plunge straight into
The foaming breakers
 
Like diving birds, letting the green turbulence
Toss them, until they snap and sink
 
Teeth into floating wood
Then bound back to their owners
Shining wet, with passionate speed
For nothing,
For absolutely nothing but joy.

“The Dogs at Live Beach, Santa Cruz” appears in Alicia Ostriker’s collection The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), available at Amazon.com.

Photo: “Retriever at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz” by Christopher Matthews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Plum Trees, poem by Mary Oliver

THE PLUM TREES
by Mary Oliver

Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into

the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment

rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don’t

succumb, there’s nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy

is a taste before
it’s anything else, and the body

can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,

the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it

into the body first, like small
wild plums.

From Mary Oliver‘s collection AMERICAN PRIMITIVE (Back Bay Books, 1983).

Painting: “Plums on the Tree,” watercolor by Lorena Uniac, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED