by Geoffrey Gaddis

I walk through seasons to find words for poems.
A stirring sprinkles dapples on the leaf floor.
Soon bare limbs will toss abstractions on winter skies.
It is hard to hold all this beauty in one viewing.
My eyes are filled, tears puddle along their rims.
I will climb to the ridgeline path many times.
In spring caterpillars drop on their threads from high limbs.
The comfort of cool shade will return on a breeze.
In winter, I will search the branches for letters.
Snow drops puzzle shadow patterns on cold drifts.

by Geoffrey Gaddis

Water shapes its banks, banks shape the river.
One is constantly containing change,
the other constantly changing.
One stands still, the other moving, yet
both remain the river.
Both have been here since the beginning
lodged in this deep fold in the earth’s crust.
Sit on the bank and become part of the river.
If any of this water is meant for you,
it will arrive at your feet.

Light will skim the surface, shadowing ripples.
Small fish dart just above the bottom sand.
A turtle waddles onto a half sunken log.
A blue heron freezes in the shallow’s reeds.
A red fox sniffs mouse trails, then takes a drink.
As evening comes, birds call.  Crickets sing slow songs.

This water reflects the cold disk of the night.
Stars dance on its mirror,
as mist rises in patches.
I am tired of Chinese poems with their moons
and rain and mountains and insects.
The poet drinks, falls unconscious, and wakes
with a writing brush in hand.
Let’s let the water run its course to the sea
where whales can cleanse it
with their fine baleen combs.

Let the water run the great belt currents
around the banks of continents
and return to this valley with the rain
talking on the water,
entering the water with its own sound.

by Paul Pines

4:00 AM
at the Northwoods Inn
the room temp set for 70
but the fan never
stops blowing

I can’t sleep

imagine writers
driving the High Peaks
to slushy Lake Placid
where shortly after breakfast
I’ll talk to them about
writing a memoir

help them find a way
to let memory speak
for itself
                     will they think
                     I’m kidding
                     and go home?

I close my eyes
think about the way memory
spreads like an ocean
in the depths
of my mind
then spills
into
the abyss
of mind-before-thought

I’ll tell them
they are heroes who hear
Destiny’s call setting off
on a journey to redeem
a treasure hidden
in the dark

remind them
that memory is mother
of the muses

a self-organizing system
that breaks down
to re/new itself
at a level of greater
complexity

a spider
in whose belly
the web is
pre/formed

the oak
in the acorn

weaver of threads
into whole cloth

point out
that what’s re/membered
is made whole

pattern from which
all patterns
are born

the field
in which we
are embedded
embedded
in us

the Genius
who begins to whisper
in our ear as soon as our lips
touch Lethe
and we drop
screaming
into the
world

by Paul Pines

A star is born

again
and again
and again

until it becomes
a Black Hole

and

no light can escape
its density

this enormous
collapse of time
and all it contains

he speaks today
mostly to interviewers

he sounds lonely
as Hamlet

and as Hamlet
might’ve said

                      He is Hecuba
                      to me.