by Michael Estabrook

The conversation comes up
all the damn time:
who needs books
when we have the Internet.
Books take up space,
collect dust, pages yellow, paperbacks fall apart,
they end up in boxes in the attic or beneath the stairs.
You don’t look things up
in books anymore. A few keystrokes
or a shout out to Alexa
and you have your answer!
So who needs books anyway?
Me. I do. Why?
Explanation by way of analogy:
40 years back in grad school a student says
to the professor, Latin’s a dead language
so why do we bother learning it?
The prof, staring with that
what–are–you–an–idiot look on his face says
“Because intelligent people learn Latin, that’s why.”

by normal

“I am the blossom pressed in a book
Found again after two hundred years — ”
— Jane Kenyon — Briefly It Enters, and
                                Briefly Speaks

october window

it is hard to break out of the solitary
it is harder to break out of the indifference of separation
to look out across space & see the eyes of another looking back maybe as
another land across the sea
maybe as an island, forgetting somehow,
it is all connected underneath.

& so the drift, which refuses to read between the lines
& oh m’gosh, shall i see you at the next war
& did i not see you once before, 10,000 yrs ago
     sitting at the same table in our family portrait
     hanging on a pre–historic painting?

it is hard to break out of oblivion
the first step has depth which is immeasurable
the buzz of silence grows louder all the time.

as the worshipping womb serves up its own version of etcetera
as the season of beauty is bludgeoned cold by the family beast
as in the uncompartalised life there is no place to hide
& oh m’gosh, it is another rainy day.

the last October leaves are falling
i am sitting by the window, once again
almost nothing beside me anymore
looking at old snapshots.
                                                             oct /19

by normal

1945
the garden will lay eggs
wild rabbits will come to preach
young eagles will soar overhead
the ghost of a familiar woman will
pass holding a basket
she will hum a lullaby, or maybe
she will hum a dirge —
memories of her colorful head wrap
the wack of her bamboo rake for
eating her worms
the first scratch ever from a cat —
but her garden was not a social
function &
by & by, blood–kin or not,
i turned intruder —
& the gate will fly open
& i will flee
i will be like an uprooted tree
that has learned to dance
& the years will turn their slow grind
i will watch most everything in my
grasp disappear
times jaws will spit out the mistake
— the mistakes will grow honorable
    by that which survives —
                                             jan /20

by Richard Tillinghast

A little house above the tsunami line,
plumbed, wired, and swept.
Tatami mats on the floor.

Trade winds riffling the palm fronds.
A place to heal. And the knowledge
there is work to be done.

Doves’ throaty pronouncements, saffron flashes
of finches, and the rice birds
that hang upside–down on stalks and peck at seeds.

Starbucks, or a train compartment,
or a room at the airport hotel
outside Mexico City. It’s all very well.

But this is better. You’ve brewed me a tonic.
You’ve painted the door red and the walls green.
The orchids are in bloom.

You gave me a compass, and here it is
on my table,
pointing north.