Through sun-dappled forest I walk,
Ambling along a winding path
Under leaf and limb while turning
Around now and then to look up
At the canopy, clear my mind,
And continue on the trail, down

Toward the river that winds down
The mountain where I began my walk;
Veering west, I’m sure to mind
The stumps and roots clogging the path –
Obstacles I encounter up
And over the hill; wheels turning

In the clock of my brain, turning
And then stopping while I rest down
On the grassy plateau, think up
Short songs to sing on the long walk
Home, and try to accept the path
I’ve chosen and buried in my mind

Every year I make up my mind,
Decide that someday a turning
Point will show the way to a path
Of humbleness and lead me down
Life’s lesson ladder – no cake walk.
I slowly, painfully climb up

Again, and like my hike, move up
To safer ground where I don’t mind
The height - it’s a breathtaking walk
The view of the colours turning
On the leaves as they soon fall down
And begin to cover the path

Reminds me of a puddled path;
Like the sun, I reflect, as up
The road I travel, wander down
Around the neighbourhood my mind
Calls “life,” and hear the key turning,
Opening the door to a walk.

We bravely walk life’s winding path
Fast kicking and slow, turning up
Stones – carefully mind your way down.

URSULA PENNER
Canada

When light faded to the sad sepia
of an old photo,
she leaned on the balustrade
of the terrace,
brushing aside wintry skeletons of
vines entwining among leftover green
fronds and purple tassels.
As she viewed silver fields surrounding
the oval mirror of the lake,
she remembered the Judas tree in Naples
and its rosy blooms.
Beneath it, her Italian lover undid her
burnished, coiled weight of hair as she
stood as immobile as the Buddha, sensing
his dormant Vesuvius demeanor.
“Bellissima,” he whispered.
How gauche and artless she had been,
how American.
As she appreciated his summer-colored
skin, his Sharif eyes, she wondered
why he had sought her out of a seething
mob of pastel girls.
There was nothing oblique about their
affair as she felt as if they dwelt in
a bathysphere, isolated from the rest
of the world, swimming around them.
She knew that beyond the mountain’s snow-
streaked cone,
Gianni would not be accepted.
She was not intrepid enough to face
her family’s trenchant words.
She-no Joan of Arc. He-no sacrificial lamb.

Gianni lives on now in a triptych of
photos on her desk.
She returns to Naples — only in her dreams.

ANNE PIERRE SPANGLER
Pennsylvania

When cops raided the party
Jackie Mae grabbed my hand
and we ran like scared pre-teens

though we were college kids
trying-on growing up
white/black in a narrow South.

— Her skin, glossy as eggplant —
black finger wearing an opal ring;
the night sky bearing one star.

Years have steered us away
but her touch lingers and how
we clung, gasping our laughter,

           That one moment, free.

ESTHER M. LEIPER
New Hampshire

Wait-a forty minutes in a fancy room.
           O-pen, open, open the door
Music’s playin’. I don’t know the tune.
           O-pen, open, open the door
I know they’re coming to get me soon.
           O-pen, open, open the door

Lays me back in a big, soft chair.
           O-pen, open, open the drawer
Picks and scrapers all a-hidin’ there.
           O-pen, open, open the drawer
Shiny drill with some parts to spare.
           O-pen, open, open the drawer

Pours a bright light right into my eyes.
           O-pen, open, open he says.
What’s a buzzin’ in my head ain’t flies.
           O-pen, open, open he says.
Turn-a your head, this way, ‘n’ that.
           O-pen, open, open some more.
I’m a-reachin’, grabbin’ for my hat.
           O-pen, open, open the door.

Silver filling in my numb mouth.
           O-pen, open, open the purse.
Dentist winters in the sunny South.
           O-pen, open, open the purse.
Was feelin’ bad and now I feel worse
           O-pen, open, open the purse.
Not a’comin’ back here any more.
           O-pen, open, open the door!

LUCILLE MORGAN WILSON
Iowa

When a person loves birds, he said,
the birds know and give them their trust.

Then my friend held out his hand
to call a meadowlark at dawn
into his palm’s warm nest.

So even when the engine’s roar
throbs dark power into the air
I still can call to my open heart
a medicine made of remembered song
that carries me, carries me everywhere.

JOSEPH BRUCHAC
New York

The wisdom of life
Is not to conceal, but to reveal
Everything that we have
For the benefit of the world.

SRI CHINMOY
New York

He carried Charlie Parker
In his heart
Miles Davis in his eyes
Each socket a hidden camera
Recording the images inside
His head

He walked the Fillmore
With Ella Fitzgerald
Wes Montgomery beating inside
His heart
His be-bop fingers snapping
At the music coming from
His soul

His eyes bore through you
Like a tiger stalking the zoo
His poems looking for an exit sign
His body a well-worn suitcase
Holding maps to exotic ports
No jazz poet before or after him
Has ever fully explored

A.D. WINANS
California

You really
had us all
bewildered, as you
carried on in your
too-big trench coat,
the pockets of your
trousers full of
who knows what.

The men we knew
did not have
hair like that,
an obscene
cacophony of curls
under an abused
top hat which
folded over
like an accordion.

Who but you
could produce
a live chicken, or
a full length of salami, or
a lighted blowtorch
from his vest pocket?
Your perfect silence
made us strain,
hoping to hear even
the tiniest of murmurs.

But the only sound was
the sounds of birds, which
emerged from a magical
arrangement of knuckles.
Oh, How just your movements
could fill a room with chaos.

But when you wrapped
yourself around the curlicue
of that harp, and
then when you played,
you played
with the angels.

DANIEL THOMAS MORAN
New York

We say: days become years,
and so it is.
Time furrows the skin of my hands;
I age as I write,
yet I hold nothing in contempt.
A fecund joy fills my womb
where my children once slept,
and I imagine a new pregnancy,
a begetting linked to the passage of time.
What if I could crawl into my own womb
only to emerge fresh and clean, baby-sweet?
Poetry is like that —
a winnowing of life from obscurity,.
Vivid impressions gestate inside me,
and I am calm,
know that I shall give birth
to a living song
before the hour’s closure.

SONJA JAMES
West Virginia

The sun rises with its concomitant clarities.
It is Columbus Day, and the last Algonquin brave
In our village fondly paddles his kayak along
A bay-like inlet up the Hudson River
Where a swan, iceberg white, fastidious as
A ghost, rides the waves like a ballerina.
She is no pet, but she deigns to accept a plum
Our Indian disembarks and sits outside
His house and works on a pair of moccasins
For me, his only customer. He dislikes
Columbus Day and says that his people never
Gave visas to the “discoverers” of America.
As for his tribe’s casino, he observes
That life is a gamble for all Americans.
He brews me tea from the bark of sassafras
And we sit silently admiring the swan
Until it is obvious that I’m boring him.
It seems like a mistake, at least, for me to stay.
I carry away my pair of moccasins
And put in my wallet the customary receipt.
“Come back,” he says. “I think you are a friend.”

STEPHEN STEPANCHEV
New York

He wakes on his side of the bed.
It is dark still-quiet except
For the clock ticking on the wall
Above the mirror. Four o’clock.

He wonders who else wakes
At this hour. He flips on the TV:
More dead in Iraq.

On the dresser, the second hand
On the Swiss time piece turns
Smoothly. It needs to be wound
Everyday, but some days he forgets.

Photos: a wedding portrait, his hair
Thick and black (now a graceful gray).
And his wife, twenty-six, holding
Their first-born on her first birthday.

At six, he hears the maid bustling
In the kitchen. He rises, too, and heads
To the bathroom to wash and shave.

The phone rings in the bedroom.
It’s his daughter, from America.
Yes, things are fine, he says.
And how’s the little one?

He steps out on the veranda.
White wisps of breath condense
Then dissolve in the cool dry air.

He waters the plants meticulously
They are mostly bare, except
For a single defiant red bloom.
He wonders what it’s called.

The field next door soon fills
with schoolchildren in crisp uniforms.
At eight, the bell rings for assembly.
They recite the Fatiha, sing the anthem
Then march off into classrooms,
Neat lines led by their teachers.
And the small brown field
Will be quiet now, until recess.

NAUSHEEN EUSUF
Bangladesh

It was a cool night and West End theatres were
closing. As I walked past Lord Nelson’s statue
toward the London Tube, I noticed a tall, heavy-set
man walking with a beautiful young woman.
As they drew closer I realized the man was the
actor Orson Welles I had seen on TV in old Hollywood
films like “Citizen Kane” and “The Third Man.”
I was so surprised and happy at my good fortune
that I stammered, “H-hello, Mr. Welles. May I please
have your autograph?” “Why yes,” he said in his deep,
resonant voice. I tingled with glee.

I quickly scrambled for a pen. That is, I tugged
and prodded, glancing frantically at Orson Welles
waiting patiently, while this starstruck slip of an
American girl looked for a pen, a pencil or even
an eyebrow pencil. Exasperated, I finally said,
“Do you have a pen, Mr. Welles?”
“No,” he said. Then he took the young woman’s hand
and walked away, while I stood there in Trafalgar Square
starstruck and dumbstruck in the velvet London night.

JUANITA TORRENCE-THOMPSON
New York