by Tim Seibles

Time is passing, I grow older, things are happening fast
This thing I do — the tongue I use — does give me some relief
All I have to hold onto is a simple song at last

The world rolls over (the shadow knows) it’s sunset in a flash
I don’ wanna be the dude who always sings to grief,
But Time is passing, I seem older, things are happening fast

Every time I drive this car    I think about a crash
I’d like to be a giant ray and wing some coral reef
All I try to hold onto is a simple song at last

Don’t we go a–gladly jobbing just to get some cash?
Today I take some time, pool the dew and sift the breeze
I wish all this could last / it won’t last

All these tv talking Teds can give a man a rash
I squint my ears and bend my head — I must be going deef
Time ran past me. I got older. Things do happen fast

You look the world dead in the face    then think about your stash
The hours cast and reel you in — the worm between your teeth
All you get to bite into is a simple song at last

Lie along the riverside    and dream into the grass
Watch the mating blue jays jitterbug from branch to leaf
They think all this will last / it might last

Do those hot potatoes, baby, quick into a mash;
Only thing can fill me up is just this late belief —
Time is passing: I grow older: things are happening fast
All I have to hold onto is a simple song at last

by Anne Britting Oleson

Who else would drive by,
holding that cigarette out the window
of a pick–up which had seen
better days years ago — only
to slam on the brakes,
reversing down Falmouth Street
to where I stand on the sidewalk?
Who else would shift that smoke
to the other hand, and grab
a fistful of books to wave at me?
Have you read this?  This?  How ’bout this?
A gift of poetry, of words
and the music that carries them?
Who else would spread
poems like the gospel from
the front seat of a work truck,
from the top of a ladder,
in a bar, at a concert, in a meeting?
And who else, I ask myself
as I wander the lost streets tonight —
who else will do it now?

by Kathleen Sullivan

Do you find yourself watching now
for stubborn crows, penny nails, limpet shells,

the dimpled light on an orange?
Now can you hear the aural roundness

of words, the oh–so–flowery sentence,
the friend in need of a cup of tea?

Through the alchemy of relationship
we aren’t pure, vacuum sealed packets

of Self, but amalgams of each other,
metamorphic rocks born of

azurite and cinnabar mica and feldspar
opal and lodestone.

The gulls, the sky shrouded in clouds,
a silver mist and a slack wind —

somewhere, maybe nosing
the bow through the blind wooly fog,

sounding for the rattle of metal fittings
or the sucking sigh of water, rock —

premonitions, collisions unforeseen —
you heard it, that voice, its confection

of velvet and gravel, something like
his own and something like Michael’s

you couldn’t tell the difference
anymore. Friends gathered, elements of

Michael remembered — through the mist
seeping in under the doors

from the ocean outside,
you could almost see winking

pulses of light bright as quicksilver,
silent as a June field of fireflies —

gold and amber flecks
(and for balance black obsidian, iron)

combining, recombining, living
in the crowded heaven of ourselves.

by Nadell Fishman

The loons on East Long Pond went silent
this morning; it’s a gray day and the chill
that rolled in from Canada last night

has autumn on its breezy finger tips.
Yesterday, a friend and I spent an hour catching up:
her summer days spent wrapping her mind

around the arthritis in her hands and knees;
my travels, the joys of packing and unpacking.
Our talk circled, an ever –tightening gyre until we arrived at last

upon your name and how abruptly you left us,
disbelief still clanging about our heads. The viral emails
over your death in the days that followed gave us details,

but no outlet to apprehend, Michael, you’re gone.

We said that’s the best way to go, in your sleep
after an evening with friends. We said that’s how

we’d like it for ourselves. We said, so fast, we never

had a chance to say — what? What would we say?
What don’t we say to each other every day of our lives

that we now regret not having said to you.
I wrote a note to your wife and son
and told them you always made the weekend coffee

three –times a year when our writers group met
and how it would be ready when we’d straggle down
in the morning, strong coffee — so strong, we’d complain —

it became a joke, but how could we do without it?
You probably drank a bit that night, smoked
your beloved Marlboros, someone most likely
passed around a joint. It was late by the time you got into bed,
celebrating with friends, other writers
after the young students had gone off excited

to be at Bread Loaf in such heady company.
Was there music — someone’s iPod
hooked up to tiny speakers on a table.

maybe a few satisfied dancers?  I remember
similar nights in grad school after a day
of good critique, feeling my work, my words

present in my body
and thinking how blessed and how
it didn’t get any better than this.