by Robin Behn

     A tune by Larry Unger
          — for Jack Myers

Two minds, side by side.

Your two minds walking a road,
a road that plunges into cedars,

cedars drinking and drinking
from the straw.

Here is your hat, sir.
Here is your other hat.

Your first mind in your first hat with the good dreams.
Your second mind takes off its hat to them.

Two hands in one mist
too dense to see.

A nodding knot of held – hands bobbing into the mist,
blood – knot riding where it can’t be seen, like singing.

Song – in – the – mind the mind swoons upon.
The feeling of turning feeling over and over.
See how many ends it has?

Jack taught me that.
Jack still walking on the bank of some river.

Some other river inking Jack into our earth.
Writing you could sail quite away on.

What he knew of love was the mist.
And is missed.

by Michael Macklin

Now freshly painted walls
tremble in the hard light of November
with secrets a carpenter
scratched in framing pencil —

No moon . . .

Words, little feathers,
that held him up through
his wandering years since a friend
breathed them into his blood.

But the stars . . .

Without understanding, he wrote them
on stair stringers, behind jack posts,
across sill plates and ridge poles.  Imprinted
on the bones of everything he built:

No moon, but the stars . . .

With each letter something quivered
within him.  Every word a flock of sparrows
whose heartbeats were tiny
hammers building something he never saw,

as if No moon,

was a key or code for everything
he did not know. But the stars,
symbols for the heaven he built toward.
This is what he left behind as he packed his tools.

But the morning

After the dust settled and the paint dried,
beyond the well – made rooms created for strangers,
he scuffed his work – boot way home
wondering what it all means.

No moon, but the stars,
but the morning sky . . .         

by Christopher Soden

word came days after at a poetry workshop
consistent with the nature of our connection
he was a friend rabbi father shaman
mentor I spent some of my most serious
drinking hours in his rich company appreciating
the glow of shared ideology getting sloppy
and burning burning with care and epiphany
I told him I loved him from the podium
of my graduate reading explaining he was
the reason I stood before that gathering
which was not flattery or exaggeration
to this moment I recall finding my way
late to his classroom and his looking up
to inform me as if I’d entirely lost
my compass we met for lunch that semester
and seth around seven I think
was wheedling him to help carve
their halloween pumpkin I would feel like
a phony now trying to excuse the distance
between us bred more of omission and dwindling
luxury of time on a residency in Europe I remember
how relieved I was to sneak him a smoke how
ghoulish is it to think of that now but I wish
I’d made time to see him in hospice when
they said he was down to a flicker
as usual I was distracted and a coward
in my heart he was a raw seraphic mingling
of bells and undiluted light he was my
leonine oracle but I could not bear to break
down at his bedside to demonstrate the fierce
longing he ignited in me it took a few minutes
after I got the news my head feverishly
transmitting repeatedly these neglected words
too late to reach him before
his train pulled out

by Marian Aitches

1
One by one, birds fly through the wide hall —
             shadows on fire – lit walls
             brighter than the night outside.
A swallow soars in by the south door,
traces high rafters.  Open sky.
The time it takes to pass to the north end,
span of a life, so said a poet centuries ago.

2
Dia de Los Muertos at Mission Park South —
             We speak with Grandma in her grave.
             San Antonio light spikes across waxwings
             roosting in cedars, trees of the dead.
1896 –1986.  Symmetry in numbers, balance of a life —
ridiculous chrysanthemums in a pock – marked urn.
Mama cries.  I rise like a note in a song.

3
Life, the dash on the headstone,
             space between the birth of light
             and the night when her spirit flew.
Standing here, who will know the stories?
The grandmother who lived like a hummingbird —
drunk in a hot pink ocean of penta flowers.
What can a dash say of the music she made?

4
The day you died a white bird drifted into
             my kitchen, circled away into night;
             bones begged for a come with me
             but the spirit said stay.  I am here with you.

We will drink red wine under turning trees, remember
leaning back – to – back on October porches —
chrysanthemum explosions on the west wall.

5
Another swallow high in the eaves reaches
             the end of the noisy hall, laughter
             of men at full tables stopped by a poem
singing fallen heroes and radiant ladies about to grow
dim with grief.   No.  We want something more —
songs about joy, more hours reciting the light
before dark calls the monster inside.