by Wren Tuatha

Cotton takes care of me.
I mend and wonder where
a word went as Cotton hops
out of bed, feeds the herd,
showers. I’m late with his
coffee. I have one job as he
capers around, clipboards
and clients’ keys, leash
and a dog to walk.

My hours pass in turns of
whiplash and molasses.
I’m glad he’s at work,
not watching. We both recall
when I was brilliant.
He soldiers and I try.
Who takes care of Cotton?

He’s aged out of his market.
Once six figures, now Cotton
cleans houses. Five today,
done at six. Home at seven
with rags to wash and stories.
Spreadsheets and payroll.
Menu ideas and shopping lists.
Leash and a dog to walk.
Cotton cares into the void.
Tonight he’ll make cornbread.

by Michael Mark

We’re all widowers here, all old guys,
just happened that way. Our dates
are dogs. Terriers, labs, mutts.
They rush to each other, tell secrets
in their own language,
the way our wives would at parties,
going off together, leaving us to us
before they left us. Jangling
our leashes, whistling, clapping,
waiting, waiting.

by Margaret Randall

Earth, that solid ball beneath our feet
spins in the vastness of space
where neither up nor down exists,
while on the orbital plane
of all we see and feel
our home on its axis tilts 23.5 degrees.

In directionless space, the tilt is only a tilt
in relationship to which
disproven theory?
Angled away from where?
Astronomers make discoveries
and poets ask questions.

This news already makes us dizzy,
then science informs us
the North Pole turned east in the year 2000.
Fifteen earth years traveling down
an alternate road. Veering
toward epiphany or emptiness?

Space has no up or down. Yet the Pole
reversed its drift from west to east,
shifted 75 degrees, a phenomenon
caused by melting ice sheets,
loss of water mass,
depletion of aquifers and drought.

What’s more, fossil records give us
a history in which both poles
have begun a reversal
that happens every millennia.
This is the earth’s interior magma
spinning us away from ourselves.

We catch fire, a civilization lured by the greed
we call progress, mirage
keeping change or solution beyond our reach.
The words fade, refocus, then fall
into place in perfect lockstep
with every savage lie.

No up, no down, no earthly cause for concern.
Yet this poet knows there is
a tipping point, a broken armature
dislodging equilibrium.
Our axis strays and the Compass Rose
falls off the picture plane.

by Michael Bove

On the banks of the Susquehanna they lived
in a shack. Frost between wood slats, a paltry
wall between winter and themselves: children
with absent parents, still in short pants in January.
No money for wool, they watched men set traps
on the ice and at sundown, curled by the stove.
She wiped her brother’s tears and took his hand.
This is how we do it, she thought, and brought him
onto the river with screwdrivers to spring the furry
captives, their eyes glinting thanks in twilight.
Great Aunt June saved the world one beaver at a time.
This she celebrates with family and breadsticks
eighty–five years later in the Olive Garden after
her brother’s funeral, a eulogy she couldn’t hear
as she remembered his tears and saw a Chickadee
dip like river water from one spruce to another.