Deluge by Liza Wolff-Francis (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Deluge
by Liza Wolff-Francis

Florida fish joint, sound of waves,
forever-live-patio-music bursting beach songs,
bare feet in sand, the top of the ocean
fading at sunset, whiskey-barrel-beer.
Lina worked there then, with her carefully
curled hair, her embrace, her stories
about her son, her aching mother,
the way she danced serving food
table to table. That one night we were there
when it began to rain, we huddled,
storm-pounding, bartenders cheering
the falling water. Instead of waiting,
we decided to make our way back
to the hotel. People crouched under
the porch roof or the covered bar.
We moved into the storm like boats,
but soon became ocean absorbing
the bliss of rain, took down our umbrella,
stopped running, and let the water
move over our skin, through our hair,
ease into our open mouths, ears, eyes,
and even with all the people watching us,
we looked back at Lina dancing
and we looked at each other and began
to laugh at how our mistake became a glory
of being alive, a wonder of self as water,
as nature, as pieces of God and a movement
much larger than us with Earth and ocean,
and we jumped and splashed
like there was nothing else.

PHOTO: Dancing in the Rain (found image).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote parts of this poem at the beginning of the pandemic when remembering places I loved, but couldn’t visit. It was a bittersweet remembering, but also brought me joy and hope to think of this time, the beach, the rain, the energy, the sounds, and people being together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Liza Wolff-Francis is a poet and writer with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She was co-director for the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival. Her writing has been widely anthologized and her work has most recently appeared in Wild Roof Journal, SLAB, and eMerge magazine. She has written reviews of poetry books that have been published on Adroit, Compulsive Reader, and LitPub. Her chapbook Language of Crossing was published by Swimming with Elephant Publications in 2015. She lives in North Carolina. Visit her at writeyourbutterfly.com. In October 2022, Liza was appointed poet laureate of Carboro, North Carolina, a post she will assume in January 2023.

Riders to the Sea by Richard L. Levesque (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Riders to the Sea
by Richard L. Levesque

We arrive at the beach
post sunset, after the storm
rolls out into the Atlantic.
The asphalt
has a wet sheen,
almost like a black mirror.

Cigarette butts float
in deep puddles
that reflect neon signs.

At a nearby bar,
a cover band
is trying to be ZZ Top.
I fumble quarters
into an ancient
parking meter.
My friend calls
her son,
checking in.

Sneakers and sandals
come off,
pants are rolled up.
And we walk
on damp sand
behind the old Pavilion building.
The floodlights there
reveal an angry, churning sea
high above wooden pillars.
Against the night sky,
rolling waves rise
and slam against the shoreline.

My friend and I gasp together
and, in that moment,
I don’t think about why I’m there.

I don’t think about
my mother’s diagnosis
or my family’s denial.

I only think about music–
Anna Calvi’s
“Rider to the Sea.”

The instrumental
swells and breaks
just like the waves in front of us.

It’s all feedback
and noise,
then it is silent, calming.

I stare at the waves,
the music in my head
tearing emotion from my heart.

I have never seen
the ocean
in this context before.

“Beautiful,”
we whisper
before walking away.

I tell my friend
my mother probably
has a year.

She predicts
I will be back home
before then.

(It is a prophecy
that comes true
in six months.)

We don’t dwell on this,
but continue up the beach instead,
putting the storm at our backs.

PHOTO: Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts (2010) by 6SN7.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: In 2013, my mother was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer and I went back to my hometown in Massachusetts to assess the situation. Things were not looking good and it was starting to get overwhelming. One night, just to get away for a minute, I asked a friend to take me to Salisbury Beach. A storm had just blown out to sea and the surf was breathtaking. I’d been going to that spot ever since I was a kid, but never had that kind of reaction before. The memory has haunted me in a good way ever since. Because of it, I can usually find the one good memory in just about any situation these days.

PHOTO: The author at the Blue Ocean Event Center (formerly the Pavilion) on Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts (Sept. 11, 2022).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Richard L. Levesque is a poet who lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with his wife Lorrie. His previous chapbooks are Bone-Break Psychobilly Stew and Fetal Graceland. In his spare time, he enjoys tinkering with computers and watching roller derby.

Elegy for My Trees by Feroza Jussawalla (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Elegy for My Trees
by Feroza Jussawalla

The weather is turning;
not, as it usually does,
when liquid gold
comes and goes,
dripping from amber branches
that shed their emerald ear drops.

This year there is no crunch
to the gold dried to airy thinness.
It is soggy damp. Slippery and sliding,
causing falls.

The skies have been weeping,
Filling the ever-overflowing rain barrels.

The continuous damp chill,
has wilted my Afghan pines
traumatized by the drought
in and around me, unready for this
bounty of water.

Many years of dry drought
have not prepared, desert sand or bark,
to absorb
what should be a gift of rain.

Instead, damp bark leeches water
releasing pine beetles, for
busy woodpecker heads to
peck, peck, peck,
tap, tap, tap.

It is a wonder their little heads don’t
fall off,
similarly making them fodder
for the lone hawk that sits
on his dying throne
a throne that I must soon have felled
before it tumbles and crumbles.

No, this water has not been a blessing,
as it breaks the banks of rivers
used to dry edges:
“This is how we were meant to be,” they say,
“to be streams in a desert,
For, when we are full and flush,
greedy gold diggers, mistaken mine cleaners,
break veins, that loose
poison into our life blood.”

Petrichor turns to putrifaction,
as drowning roots, lose loose soil
threatening to topple
stately majestics that must be felled
before canyon winds blow them over.

No, we have abused mother earth too long,
and now she lets loose wind and weather,
tides that bring in the amakua, as sharks
that bite children by the seaside.
This niño does not bring a blessing,

Santo Niño, can you save us with your rebirth?

PHOTO: New Mexico storm (Sept. 30, 2017). Photo by John Fowler on Unsplash.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is an elegy for MY eight big Afghan pines that had to be felled, a couple years ago, in 2015, when our desert environment received and excess of rain. In 2015, the gold King mine waste water spilled into our rivers, in the one year that we had an excess of rain and the rivers were full. Thus, the water could not be used.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Feroza Jussawalla, is Professor Emerita, of English, at the University of New Mexico, Albuqueruque. She has taught for forty plus years and published several works of criticism on Postcolonial Literatures. Her collection of poetry, Chiffon Saris, was published by Toronto South Asian Review Press and The Writer’s Workshop, Kolkotta (2002).

Buddhist Chants to Heal by Shirani Rajapakse (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Buddhist Chants to Heal
by Shirani Rajapakse

The rains retreats are ending
this month. Tonight monks
in the neighborhood temple
will assemble in the audience hall
to chant pirith — Buddhist sutras, words
ancient as the hills, but wiser than all
the knowledge that has been.
They will take it in turns
throughout the night
to chant the words of the Buddha,
just like they’ve done
many countless times before and will continue
into the future.              A large water-filled
                          earthenware pot
sits on the table
in front of them
as they chant.

In the morning
                          they will distribute the pirith
                          water to all present. People
will collect them in hands outstretched,
joined together, cupped
to receive the blessing.

There is a belief, older than time,
that water retains memory.
Water that holds
the vibrations of Buddhist chants heal
and we take in this water, let it course
gently down our throats
in the conviction
it will soothe us, bring us inner peace,
even momentarily.

             I’ve grown up
             with this belief
             just as I’ve
sipped on the vibrations of chants
a hundred million times
                          or more.

Its pouring again and I don’t
want to venture outdoors.
I take out my book of sutras and      chant,
first for myself, then for my family
and friends,
for all beings
seen and unseen that inhabit
the earth and the planets —
the entire universe.

I chant for the world
that is in need of healing,
I chant for the trees
                          swaying outside,
                          the birds
                          sheltering under leaves,
             lonely stray dogs howling with winds,
             animals trying to survive
                          in the wild,
people all over.

I have no pot of water,
but that doesn’t matter. The rain
thundering outside will
lift the positive vibrations of the sacred chants
and carry them to wherever
rainwater flows,
to wherever
healing is needed.

PAINTING: Miracles of Each Moment by Kazuaki Tanahashi (2003).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: What immediately came to mind as I began to write a poem for this prompt was the connection between water and healing. Many cultures practice water therapy. In Sri Lanka where I come from, water has been used for centuries as a vehicle to transfer the positive effects of Buddhist chants. We do this regularly. However, November, as I write this, is extra significant in the Buddhist calendar, as it marks the end of the rains retreat for the monks who have been temple-bound for the past three months. The last day is marked by all-night chanting. The offering of this poem is my way of transferring positive thoughts to the world and bring it some healing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shirani Rajapakse is a poet and short story writer from Sri Lanka. Her publications include the award-winning Chant of a Million Women and I Exist. Therefore I Am. Rajapakse’s work appears in Dove Tales, Buddhist Poetry, Litro, Linnet’s Wings, Berfrois, Flash Fiction International, Voices Israel, About Place, and Mascara. Find more of her work at shiranirajapakse.wordpress.com. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Extreme Weather by Dina Elenbogen (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Extreme Weather
by Dina Elenbogen

The border says stop to the wind but the wind speaks another
language and keeps going
                                             Alberto Rios

They removed the fence that separates waves
from people walking There’s nothing between us

and water turning like oceans of larger coasts
The day we didn’t dig my uncle’s grave

a Derecho swept the shores
of Lake Michigan uprooted

ancient Maples American Ash
We ran against the darkening sky

sheltered indoors and watched
from a safe distance

His ashes danced
the rhythms of distant waters

They call it erosion when waves take
more than they give back

swallow the sand beneath our feet
If you walk away

from the lake towards the shadows
of hundred-year-old homes

you’ll see ladders still leaning
towards the roofs that failed

when hail bombarded us in April
the night before the holiday of plagues

We tried to collect ourselves and the shards
that landed in our gardens

Hands still raw from March winds
we planted against tyranny

and later gathered zucchini
tomatoes and basil

There were seeds that promised
to sprout but lay dormant

We watered throughout July’s drought
nodded at neighbors through cloth

masks and gloved knuckles
We kept turning the earth planting milkweed

next to dreams
of an ordinary life

It’s autumn and time
to remove the tangled roots

of what no longer bears fears
I had meant to write fruit What

no longer bears
fruit but fear accompanies

every gesture
I am writing to tell you that skies change suddenly

roots that seem deep can be lifted
by November wind

Listen closely nearby is the water
we call life

Previously published in December magazine (Fall/Winter 2021).

PHOTO: Lake Michigan waves by Jill Wellington.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dina Elenbogen, a widely published and award-winning poet and prose writer, is author of the memoir Drawn from Water (BKMk Press, University of Missouri) and the poetry collection Apples of the Earth (Spuyten Duyvil, NY). Her work has appeared in anthologies, including Fury: Women’s Lived Experience During the Trump Era (Regal Books, 2020) City of the Big Shoulders (University of Iowa Press), Beyond Lament (Northwestern University Press), Where We Find Ourselves (SUNYPress), Rust Belt Chicago Anthology, and magazines and journals, including Lit Hub, December magazine, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Bellevue Literary Review, Woven Tale Press, Tiferet, Tikkun, Paterson Literary Review, Connecticut River Review, New City Chicago, and the Chicago Reader. The recipient of fellowships in poetry and prose from the Illinois Arts Council and the Ragdale Foundation, she has a poetry MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago Graham School, where she received the Excellence in Teaching Award. Dina also consults individually with writers on creative projects. Visit her at dinaelenbogen.com.

How the Poet Learns from Snowbound by Tricia Knoll (HOW TO Series)

How the Poet Learns from Snowbound
by Tricia Knoll

Every sentence has potential to sparkle. If not, let it lie silent on other flakes
  and look for a footstep or a pawprint to suggest a new path.

An icicle glints in the sunbeam, a prism. And in moonlight, its glassy
  twist lights the theater of tragedy or midnight romance.

A bit of thaw, one day at a time, and the ice dam drips. Short minutes
  at noon, words may drip if they cannot gush.

The bird feeder witnesses to winter’s hunger. The insatiable
  desire for nurturing, nutrition. Needed feeding

to keep wings beating. Thesaurus on the table. Anthologies
  on the night stand. Pecks of haiku. Suet of sonnets.

Fear lumpy sidewalk ice? Strap on traction cleats and imagine skating.
  Welcome glides. Wind in your hair. Escape. Free verse.

PAINTING: La Pie (The Magpie) by Claude Monet (1868-1869).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I’m reading poetry craft books, listening to meditation guides, trying to be in the moment. This moment is snow. And more snow. Plows and ice. Pawprints from the squirrels and cottontails. The wing impressions of a hawk capturing a mouse in snow. With the thought there must be something there to learn. As for Vermont, in the next couple of weeks the sap will start running and we will have maple syrup.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who has spent many, many months like everyone else mostly at home. For her, within a small woodlot. Recent months have also brought many feet of snow, the glint of hanging ice, the threat of ice under foot. Fortunately, she’s been doing a lot of writing and looking forward to her new chapbook, Checkered Mates, to come out from Kelsay Books in the next few weeks. Her other collections include Urban Wild, Broadfork Farm, Ocean’s Laugher, and How I Learned To Be White. Visit her at triciaknoll.com. Find her on Amazon and Twitter.

Seiche—Long Point Bay, Port Dover (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

Seiche—Long Point Bay, Port Dover
     for my friend John Tyndall who gave the gift of a new word
by John B. Lee

often
in the dead calm of a motionless morning
when the lake
is smooth as pulled silk
polished blue with a new-washed sky
shining like a carried mirror
with the still reflection
of waist-deep bathers
afloat in colours pooling away from their bodies
like rainbows of wet oil

it comes
at first as a long line
far out
in the fish-deep waters
of Long Point Bay
a linear pulse
visible as if of a counterpane
undulating about
the dream sigh of a water god
followed fast by shore hush
wave on wave sounding the drag of sand and shell

and the waders
respond, briefly rocking where they stand
like the thought toddle
of lost equilibrium

and also in the equipoise of an evening
I have seen this same
windless oscillation
curling its lip in the harbour
nudging docked boats
so they bob and joggle
like the last swirl
of an exhausted dreidel
dizzy with the loss of turning

somewhere in the deep shallows
of felt beauty, well below
the ghost’s slip
of the coming on and the going away
of ephemeral mists
there resides
in me, the true possibility of my soul
its memory alive
at the very tuning fork
of Adam’s resonant bone
receiving life and responding in kind
to that breath of grace

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is inspired by the seiche tides that occur in Long Point Bay (Ontario, Canada).

PHOTOGRAPH: “Stormy Waters” (Lake Erie, Port Dover, Ontario, Canada) by Tracy Bennett. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John B. Lee was appointed Poet Laureate of the city of Brantford, Ontario, Canada, in perpetuity in 2005 and Honourary Poet Laureate of Norfolk County for life in 2015. His work has appeared internationally in over 500 publications and he has well over 70 books in print. The recipient of nearly 100 prestigious awards for his writing, he lives in a lakefront home in Port Dover, Ontario.

Blizzard Sestina by Charles Levenstein (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

Blizzard Sestina
by Charles Levenstein

We thought the end would be flood, a fire,
maybe something nuclear and quite unspeakable.
Snow, of course, never occurred to us,
not the acres that now blanket our city,
not in breathtaking flurries,
not in smothering blizzard.

Once I imagined cozy Christmas blizzards,
urbane wine mulling on a tended fire,
cosmopolitan laughter sprinkled in flurries;
to be stranded did not mean unspeakable,
whether rolling countryside or sparkling city,
cossetted affluence protected us.

Narcissus never conceived an “us,”
distant from limpid pool was the Arctic blizzard
and the bleak wint’ry streets of the city.
Imagine him drowning in fire!
Imagine sirens speaking the unspeakable!
Completion not with a bang but a flurry!

Real estate speculators were in a flurry –
Prices soared beyond the reach of most of us,
Unspoken deals remained unspeakable,
Ticker tape falling like confetti in a blizzard –
How to explain these snowy dunes set afire
by desperate search for warmth in the city?

As you may know, there can be comfort in the city;
the rush, the lights, even bistros are flurries —
a credit card, some cash, the intimacy of fire –
for the young in urban anonymity there’s an “us”
that overcomes windchill in the blizzard!
For others the streets are unspeakable –

Poets are called to speak the unspeakable!
To comprehend and reveal the cruelty of the city!
If in blind comfort we ignore the blizzard,
imagining the mountains of new ice and snow are flurries
incapable of freezing our friends and families – “us”–
who will interpret simmering revolutionary fire?

We who feel the fire and have learned about the unspeakable,
we perceive a re-discovered “us,” a suffering city:
the cries are not mere flurries, they foretell the blizzard.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I live in Brookline, Massachusetts, next to Boston — eight feet of snow and counting!  My daughter has sent me a set of snap-on metal cleats so I can go walking on days that the temperature stays above 10 degrees or so.  It’s beautiful, but I am old.

IMAGE: “Boston Blizzard” (Jan. 27, 2015), Reuters

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Charles (Chuck) Levenstein is a retired professor. Levenstein has been writing poems since he was 15 years old, but burned them every 10 years, some because of shyness about them, some because they were really awful. He began writing poems again in 2000, largely because Internet poetry forums were an easy vehicle for trying out new work and learning from other writers. He also had erratic sleeping habits – exacerbated by sleep apnea – and late-night sessions on the computer were easy. He also became a yoga student of the late Tom Stiles (Mukunda) and that cleared away a lot of debris. In 2001, he published a collection of poems, Lost Baggage, with Loom Press in Lowell, Massachusetts. In the subsequent years, he published poems in a raft of e-zines. He was the winner of some small prizes – from Flashquake and from MiPoesia for poems in a Goya contest and a bonsai contest. His work was featured in Gary Blankenship’s e-zine and in The Hiss Review and Loch Raven Review. He became involved heavily in the now defunct Poetry Niederngasse, an e-zine based in Zurich, became a contributing editor for PN, and wrote a regular poetry/rant called “Poems of World War III.” Many of these poems were collected in a book published with Lulu.com called Poems of World War III. Most recently, he published another smaller collection with Lulu.com called Animal Vegetable.

Faux Spring in Southern California by Robbi Nester (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

Faux Spring in Southern California
by Robbi Nester

It’s been a month since the last rain.
Tumbleweeds that last fall
pursued their manic course
across the highway
have settled in for the season,
send out tendrils
like misdirected telegrams.
Another frost will surely follow.
Even the birds sing all night,
making the most of a short season.

PHOTOGRAPH: “Apache Canyon in the Los Padres National Forest, California” by Robert Eovaldi. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robbi Nester is the author of a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012), and a collection of poems, A Likely Story (Moon Tide Press, 2014). She has also edited an anthology of poems inspired by shows on public TV, The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes Press, 2014).

Eleven Below in Vermont by Cameron Miller (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

Eleven Below in Vermont
by Cameron Miller

Onyx dome over pastures of snow
trees cast shadows by starlight.
Nothing moves.
No flashlight,
everything we need to see
seen.
We stop, dog and me,
mesmerized
by Milky Way
brushed thin on arch of pale glitter
from horizon to horizon.
Even dog stares into illuminated stillness.
Seven sisters over Jupiter
tip Littler Dipper upside down
spilling light into our darkness.
Then we hear it,
cold calling us from four corners.
Half creaks
muted pops
from inside trees.
Frozen moisture trapped inside wood
pushes outward
stretching rigid life
demanding it change, expand.

“Ert” “Crk”
     “Trtk.”
Dog’s ears perk
     head tilts
first left then right
then up then down.

Moments unroll
     sounds, dog, me,
     all one
with snow, dappled light,
piercing cold.
Stillness
the voice of winter’s night
lingers.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The raw and desolate beauty of Vermont winter and stunning night sky, as with anything so exquisite, are beyond the grasp of words. Perhaps only in painting with words, such as poetry, can we even hope to evoke the experience.

IMAGE: “”Snowy Chapel at Night”(Little Stone Chapel built in 1950 by Werner von Trapp, Stowe, Vermont) by Edward Fielding. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cameron Miller is a Hoosier by birth, a preacher by profession, and an author by vocation. He is the writer behind the curtain at www.subversivepreacher.org, and has also written professionally as a columnist and storyteller. Recently he traded fulltime parish ministry for writing fiction, poetry, and spiritual reflections while also relocating to the fabled Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. He has a poem included in the “I Am Waiting” Series on Silver Birch Press, with more poems appearing in upcoming anthologies by Eyewear Press and Inwood Indiana Press.