by Leslie Ullman

Lord, forgive me if I don’t look for you
beneath vaulted ceilings built by
canonical money and generations of peasants
sweating against blocks of stone.  Forgive me
that I shiver inside the stained glass
extravagance of Notre Dame;
that my neck aches beneath the Duomo’s
distant mosaics, while others bow over their
clasped hands as though You
resided there, Your providence housed
in ever smaller enclosures, each supplicant
the reverse end of a telescope.

Forgive me that I can’t forget the money
that has changed and changed hands
in Your name.  The darkened
centuries.  The multitudes
lashed, mowed down, locked away
from natural light . . .

Forgive me if the light rising from
the beads a shaman once pressed to resin
inside a gourd to resurrect the spirit – world of
jaguar, iguana, scorpion, and snake
makes before me an altar of cerise and cobalt
and lifts me in a way I can’t explain.

Forgive me that I lose track of time when I behold
the space within curves of driftwood shaped
by the meeting of two rivers; that dancing
leaves me cleansed in sweat and eased of
travail; that I am consoled less by the thought
of heaven than I am by the dog who rises silently
to walk beside me when I leave the dance hall.

by Andrea Blancas Beltran

You never told me
            You were leaving
When I asked.

You just propped up
            Your fishing pole
            By the front door,
Waited for      the perfect day.

All these years of knowing
             My heart
And its grave –digging fear of loss —
You chose simply
To not            respond.

You didn’t spare me.
Or the fish.

by Andrea Blancas Beltran

I knew a bird could sing
but I never knew a bird
            had a song
until you.

The ease of your laugh,
the way you crossed
            your legs
while enjoying tea       and discussing
poetry               according to the world
            and poetry
            according to us,
red tulips with yellow hearts,
and how I needed to talk
            to myself more.

You made it all
            look so easy.
Even the dust on the cracked window sill
had a perfect place       on your page —
how you made it look so glorious.

When I write
            I think of you

and wonder:
Would this be good enough
for Jack?

by Sandee Lyles

We drift along and fail to notice
What floats by much of the time
Up and down, up and down
We bob and grab for big stuff

Likely miss more subtle bits
Then bump into one once in a while
It was Jack who said,
“I see you there.”

He took the bite out of wind
The burn out of sun
The sting out of salt
And skipped his heart across our ocean