by Sam Less

They don’t fidget,
squat squarely
on the turning earth,
high-walled fortresses
humble cathedrals
or prairie-ark
focused on enduring.

Time will eventually break its back
but the roofline claim
is granted in perpetuity,
gaps interpolated as needed.

Half collapsed
its dignity honored
by neglect,
the inner atmosphere
still humid with exhalations
of heavy animals
and the perfume of dry cured hay.

The siding slats are
another matter,
stolen for their weathered
appearance
destined to become
the chic embellishment of
a modern city apartment,
an opening in its place
exposes the reed
that utters this protest.

by Sam Less

Passionate,
eager to lead
me like a child
hand in hand
through the crowded exhibition
she navigates the narrow passage
flanked by hors d’oevour-wielding
connoisseurs
to arrive at last
at a clearing before
this simple still-life
of crude, subtle-tone bottles,
so much riding, it appears, on the
delicate relationship between its forms
and the featureless background,
its sudden test of my aesthetic sensitivity
a minefield where a wrong word
will shatter us,
somehow more fragile
than these perfect misshapen vessels.

by Charlene Langfur

Today I let the poem take to what is here around me,
to the little birds in the grass looking for twigs and seeds.
The light washing over everything I know about where I am,
the pink poppies and the crazy heat of the solar wind
where I walk my small dog in early morning and late at night
in a little world in a giant universe of stars and suns
of atoms and quarks expanding in light years and nanoseconds.
I count it out so as not to forget what’s in front of me,
cooking dinner with garlic, the elixirs I imagine, violets
for the salad, the richness of a colorful life, full of pencils
and old books, good reads, books easily read again and again,
the color purple, a cache of greens, the deep blue in my shirt
and the light blue in the sky, the length of light we see anything in,
how we begin each day, in each year on earth here in the galaxy
of the sun

by Charlene Langfur

This is my first time out again
walking on my own, ready to start over
like the rose buds outside the front door
opening up in the dark, it is what they do
when the near light takes over, the dark blue sky
overhead, shadowing a cloud or two, I expect
a break, but here there are only tiny little stars,
nothing to give up trying about, only a reason
to keep on about a life, ideas about the future,
ideas that crack open like an egg or grow into petals,
the ideas breaking open again as if opening counts
more whether they actually work or not because it is
the way things start, getting better and better until
it is the first time again, and we find ourselves
where we belonged all along, edging along
the hedges of purple heather flowers, walking
tall as ever, my little dog guiding our way
as she knows how to do, away from what
is too busy, toward what we need to discover
all over again, I get it, it is the beginning
of what we already know, the new moon, here
is where we are not done yet, stepping light
but knowing the way, circling home again
opening in the dark, it took less time than I thought,
making a way again following it out