by David Filer
     The sad, lucent, malevolence of the heavens . . .
               — David St. John, Lucifer by Starlight

The stars emerge at
dusk and find the names
we have given them:

Orion.  Lyra.
Cassiopeia.
Cancer.  Gemini.

Then they are ours, skies
we have stories for,
skies we’ve been warned of,

until a new dawn
comes, and they are blind
to us again, just

Venus, the cold one,
setting late but bright,
reminding us, though

we have modern dreams,
not to forget love’s mean
dependence on night.

by Alice Bolstridge

All living, dying things I touch or see
deceive my knowing — the world’s not me,
it’s other: bear, rock, beech tree.

Touching you, my other, gives such pleasures
I think I’ve entered paradise, measured
and crossed world bounds.  I’m just assured

I’ll not be lonely anymore when the world
dissolves in darkness and all is void
again, all one, all unborn.  No rod

or road.  Like Job, I cry out for presence
I behold.  When world and I are one scent
there is no smell, and I can’t know myself

nor you.  But, in fertile absence, something breathes,
beckons.  We waver, flutter like falling leaves.

by Alice Bolstridge

Veins map surfaces.  In mayflower
petals and leaves, they form boundaries
of smaller and smaller patterns.  Things
branch — stems, trees, families, water systems,
blood and nerve paths.  Weather maps show
the air itself swirling, heat rising to form
storms in the image of galactic spirals.

As large and as small as my eye can see,
design governs, but hard as I look
I cannot see the designer.  Some place
in Tennessee, trees grow on top of huge boulders.
Roots curl down around the rock
to find a hold in earth.  Unseeing, designer
and designed resist and hold each other.

by Jeff Hardin  
(Phoenix, Arizona)

You and I at the crossroads,
One leading down the path of submission,
The other pointing to still another fight.
Both routes bear the evil seeds of misunderstanding.
Don’t you want to close your eyes?
Let your loves and hates and hope
Be scattered by the great winds of chaos?
Better for the emotions
To be decimated
Into oblivion,
A nothingness,
Splintered and fragmented
Into the nameless recess of black night.