by Alice Duggan

give me a slow morning.
Let me stop on the stairs,
talk to the cat, decide
not to do the dishes —

then undertake a new garden.
Burbling water will call to the birds.
Lush underbrush for the small ones,
tall elms for the lordly oriole.

Then I can hear call his bright
syncopated call. Dear Life, give me
a beautiful dress. The lover who comes
with it. You know what I need.

I will worship a slow morning.
I will vow to do nothing at all
—and serve no one. Only to
wear a beautiful dress

like a bright migrant
passing through.

by Kate Cheney

Between window box & clapboard wall, a spider has woven
a sheer tissue of web. It lifts as the cool fall air flows through it,
and waves like a silk flag, a languid gesture. A goodbye.
If it could sound, it would be an oboe. A bird flies in the same
waving motion, up and down: a voice in a meadow singing alone.
A leaf is falling slowly in circles to the seat of an empty chair,
its flame red a complement to the green ticking stripe.
The sky is the color of doves. Layers beneath composting
egg shells, carrot strips, weeds and vegetal remains
have turned a rich brown—the earth has become itself again.
It sings as it turns under the garden fork.
I have been, and now I am becoming something else.

by Kate Cheney

Color that chills,
fractures,
breaks like ice.
Not the pale
alizarin stain
of human corpuscles,
but the blue of sapphires,
delphiniums, cobalt ink:
the blood of the horseshoe
crab carries copper,
not iron—its element flows
like a scarf of sky,
or sub-zero air
under a pocket of snow.

We named them after horses,
in the days before cars,
shoveled and ground them
to fertilize farms.
To test medicine for purity,
we milk their kindness today,
strap them upended in rows to IVs,
and suck the blue from their veins,
blood more sensitive to toxins
than anything on earth.

by Charlotte Mathews

At the exhibit of unwearable shoes,
the woman beside me tells her
granddaughter about the dangers
of high heels, how they can trip
you up when you least expect it,
leave you bruised and muddled,
late for the event that made you
put on the things in the first place.
But these shoes aren’t for wearing.
They’re designed to tell stories
or to get us to tell our own, which
is exactly what my friend does,
explaining that we can be held liable
for an abandoned car or decrepit
trampoline hanging out in our side
yard. The legal term is attractive nuisance
and refers to any object that could lure
children who might not understand
the hazard, who routinely cherish
what adults no longer even see:
the heart shaped puddle,
the dandelion gone to seed.