TORTOISE by Gino Peregrini, REQUIESCAT EN PACE For my wife Lucy (March 4, 1930 - August 14, 2003) by
Victor P. Gendrano

Stench of burning petroleum blankets the hunting fields of Nimrod
while enchained maidens perfume the curled beard of Nimrod.

Weary and bitter, the great hero Gilgamesh crosses the waters
to hear the Flood Story, but hears no word of Nimrod.

Ezekiel lay prone before the celestial Merkavah;
military Merkavahs wag their cannon at the gates of Nimrod.

The great king's gates, guarded by bearded lions, warded by wings;
the great king's tower falling in Shinar, falling at the feet of Nimrod.

We are broken and we do not heal without yet further breaking.
We are, Gino, bleeding shadows cast far from the glory of Nimrod.

When Europeans followed their restless nature,
They arrived here and found a world of trackless nature.

Out in space, huge rocks tumble in wiggly orbits.
We watch them, count the motions of their reckless nature.

Across Asia they trecked, those ancestral beings,
Following an isthmus into Alaska's heedless nature.

Thor and Odin, Zeus and Ares, warriors and kings;
The divine still imposes on human pawns its merciless nature.

Broken, Gino, all the careful towers we built to heaven.
Cast by the Thunderer down and left alone with hopeless nature.

In Union I ran clean out of gas,
stopped at a station to fill up on gas.

Dark-faced men scowled through their beards,
despising a world that guzzled gas.

A chant on their radio I could not understand.
The men sang along, pumping gallons of gas.

Suddenly I knew I was hearing a ghazal
in a stream of pop music that flowed with the gas.

O harmony borne from Bangladesh to N.J.,
as they cheated Ruth on the price of the gas.

In the busy city seeking her own quietude,
at two o'clock she found noontide of quietude.

Across the Pont Neuf strolls forlorn Baudelaire.
The Seine flows on past stones of quietude.

Steam from bitter coffee mingles with Gauloise smoke,
spiraling in a faint blue crown of quietude.

Rainflowers scattered on cemetery paths -
she reads aloud carved poems of quietude.

Ruth still remembers when she spat up blood,
she was living alone in the Hotel Quietude.

HAIBUN

YOSAMI, JAPAN
James Fowler

 From the triangular elevator, I look down from the glass outer walls. This hotel seems so large for such a small village. When I first enter the elevator on the fourth floor, I can see the encircling rice paddies. On the way down, I study the lights on the main street. Tomorrow, I will attend a meeting five kilometers south, but tonight, I seek a ramen stand to get some supper.

    an artist's easel
    outside a Shinto Shrine
    another gaijin

He asks me to join him for the evening meal in the artists' enclave at the Buddhist Monastery. He wants me to talk about home to the Americans living there. I tell him that I'm in the Navy and haven't been to the states in fifteen years. He smiles. A new voice will do.

    bowls of rice
    vegetables and miso soup
    Buddhist mantras

On the western slope of the mountain the old buick sits on its axles, hemmed in by aged poplars and a stone wall. A striped maple holds the passenger-side back door open. The late thirty's sedan has grown the color of dirt, but the metal fights, not ready to become dirt. Covered by a piece of cardboard the back seat still works. The springs still provide some bounce for my love and I.

    dashboard
    a family of deer mice
    peeks out

On my appointed route along the Old Claremont Road, I find a heavy plastic grocery bag. I look inside and see a dead, half-liquefied cat, a tiger by the fur that's left. I drop the putrid mess into my litterbag and, though the bag's not full, I tie it closed and leave it on the berm.

My imagination drags the smell along all day.

    new shoots coming up
    another grocery bag
    beside some bottles

Place I always wanted to leave, place where I always return.  Today I visit Walnut Hill, a park that rises suddenly from downtown New Britain like a mountain on a child’s game board.  I was born on this hilltop forty-six years ago, in a hospital overlooking maple, oak and white pine.  As I drive up the curlicue road, I see concrete stairs poured into the hillside.  The stairways lead to green.

South of the hospital, a granite column topped with an eagle rises hundreds of feet.  Cedar and pompom marigolds encircle the shrine to World War II veterans.

I look out over the city once called "The Hardware Capital of the World."  Factories forged ball bearings, screws, bullets.  What remains are undulating rows of three- and six-family houses for those who work and live here.  Red brick factories are converted into apartments or medical offices.  At noon, the Fafnir Bearing Company whistle shrills.

I cross a knoll to the east, rediscover the meadow and sway of bluets: a feeling I seek wherever I go.  The roar of a mower interrupts.

near the band shell
tulip tree -
claw clatter on bark

I’d ride my aqua Schwinn for hours along the blue-collar, suburban streets, collecting—chestnuts, mica, amber glass shards—to admire.  One June morning, the first of summer vacation, I circled Israel Putnam School.  Breathing in just-mown sweetness of the soccer field, I spied on empty classrooms.  Having graduated third grade, I was no longer the quiet girl at her desk.  I was an adventurer, free to learn whatever life would show me.  Moments later, I discovered along the path a mouse.

peeping
beneath pine needles -
a gray flit

Only in Grimm’s fairy tales had I ever seen a mouse.  It was dead, yet beautiful in its stillness.  I stroked the fur and toy ears.  Scooping it up with oak leaves, I rode home with it on the tail fin.  We had no pets.  I decided to keep the creature in a shoe box under my bed with other treasures.

Days later, during back yard kickball, I heard Mom’s vacuum cleaner drone.  Suddenly, a shriek.

                        only that star
                              and I
                                        alone
                                     -  Eulberg

I arrive home after a day at the office, close the door behind me, kick off my shoes.  I feel you all around me, savor our time together like a Sauvignon.  After dinner I garden, pull weeds and snip off old roses.  Wordless, we watch fleas swirl madly in the sunset.

Others wonder why I travel the Via Negativa of darkness and void.  Did you go alone?  Aren’t you seeing anyone?  Loneliness is the bright room where you and I meet.  Beyond personality we commune.

                       on this road
                       where nobody else travels
                       autumn nightfall
                                                                - Basho

The road to the temples of Mount Hurago, was narrow, slowing climbing upward, and flanked by magnificent trees. Trees, that seemed older, that seemed to hold tomes of history, within their leaves. These trees seemed more of everything than the trees of my urban neighborhood. My eyes were plunged, captivated and caught in the scattered light that found its way through the thickness of branches. Small pleasing patches of yellow that illuminated the spirit with the same childish joy of chasing fireflies. I walked with a new born pace, in the place of  centuries of soul seeking steps. All those that had come, before me. Each step, was an anticipation, a discovery of things known and unknown. This is the way, I thought to myself. This is the way we should learn to live, as if the next step will open the gates of purpose and direction.

Mount Hurago ~
autumn sun captures
a willing prisoner

     My mother-n-law C. at home - hospice style - Washington, DC. Everything very slow moving - breakfast takes all morning. It is raining, gray, the house smells of sickbed. At least I opened the shades. Everyone does the crossword puzzle. I answer the phone. I am the daughter-in-law. I wonder if I can get out of here long enough to buy a toothbrush - forgot to pack mine. A friend of mine who works with hospice had advised me - be patient.

Hanging basket of
Pink and fuchsia impatiens
Left on the wet ground

Still beautiful
Blackware pot
I brought you
From Casas Grandes
Next to the morphine.

     Last night C. fell getting out of the wheelchair and we had to call 911. Three large blond bruiser guys came and lifted her.  It is amazing how vibrant the world looks outside the house even on a half hour walk. The statue of an elephant with a real sparrow perched on it. A man in a business suit lying on his back on a small park of grass.  The coffee shop with its glass case of pastry. Rain in the backyard - violets, dandelions, clover, ivy, a yellow flowering succulent, moss, all growing between the paving stones on the small patio. C. in the hospital bed looking translucent.

I buy two new
Nightgowns; you won’t live
To wear them out.

     Doing the laundry I could pair up all my father-in-laws socks but one. I tried to hide it in the basket of clean clothes - the one missing a mate.

     A more uphill feeling today - more testy.            
     The aged rabbi arrives, with his own handicap...

Hospice rabbi
with a cane, himself
Looks none too spry...

My father-in-law quips that the rabbi will perform the funeral, assuming he, the rabbi, lives that long.
     Walk to café - eat a bear claw pastry, drink coffee. there was a time when this wasn’t such a rare treat – I’m getting older too. But what a perk up! The house gets to me after a while.

     Reading Gretel Ehrlich’s book on Greenland. In it she says the Inuit believe a man can become an iceberg, a shaman can become a she-bear and come back again, but that the essential nature remains the same. So C. has gone from being a lively old lady to a heap of needs. The portrait of her grandson looks down from the photo - a grinning child who may some day be a very old man. 
     Yesterday the peonies bloomed and I cut a dark red one and a white one and brought them in for C. to see. the white had a gorgeous faint trace of red - look, I said, like the dye on a piece of pottery.
     She corrected me: glaze, she said precisely, not dye.

Her hands too weak
To lift peonies
One white, one red

     Claire died. at 6:30 pm. My husband Rich was sitting in the room with her, doing the crossword puzzle by himself.

How odd
To see the timed lamp
Blink on
After
You’d gone

     After the funeral parlor, there was a brief service in the cemetery and we said Kaddish. It was the first day without rain in over a week.

Blue/black butterfly
Glints in sunshine, flits
By the open grave.

HAIKU

doubles flag, comb sob p
layer each,
trounce the booshes

STREAK
John M. Bennett

cloud mustered spray the
mild ew rope the
corn burst the banner casting

HEAP
John M. Bennett

luster off the plumber
pool the
stopper wind folds un folding

KEEPS
John M. Bennett

d rain the yard g ash er
soupy st air
o pen gagged the sp oon

SLEEPS
John M. Bennett
fo cal lis ting aft er
he aps numb
er got a glow a s lathered!

an algaed bowl -
a snail leaves a streak
of clear glass

a child
twisting string
into a bracelet

sunlight
on the floor
a ruler

the world
spinning
under a hand

an eraser
clearing space
for what is next

pulling you back
in time -
the smell of crayons

white
silence
a spotlight

me
alone
on a stage

words
won't come
keep moving

smile
eyes shine
from the dark

no
ad lib
comes to mind

time
minutes
seem like hours

cough
one more
another

run
no can't
don't panic

glance
off stage
no help there

look
as if
you're thinking

earth
swallow
me now please

cold
sweat runs
down my back

sounds
from the
audience

they're
leaving
oh my god

God!
my cue
"God forgive..."

Every morning, birds
interrupt my sleep but stirs
the dying man's heart

turning to my side,
facing a rusted bucket-
nausea invades.

I can see my breath -
after midnight, slow walking
empty silent streets

stumbling - falling through
darkness, bar hoping - Asahi drunk
I wake shivering.

   Winter chill -
   her face grows
   more wrinkles

   The lone hibiscus
   waits for the sun to bloom:
   morning's first offering

   Looking for a prey
   a snake slides through the fence:
   warmth of the sun

   The morning fog rests
   on a swathe of pond moss:
   the lone fish looks for sun

   Icy bed:
   moving the pillow
   closer to hers

   Chilly wind slaps
   the window panes closed to keep
   cross-legged couple warm

   Receding
   winter leaves behind
   allergies

   Winter's over:
   spring knocking with
   mango blossoms

SIJO

in a rut by the lilacs a tortoise reflects hot sun
my forehead my belly run rivulets in this heat-wave
in the garden, a locust sprout in the hedge catches fire

the get-well balloon lies inert
amidst the wilting flowers

as her confessor dispenses
the communion and last rites

and the full moon leaves its glow
disappearing in final flight

a man playing
Danny Boy
on a saw
and a man who removes
his wig to sing along

no ghosts
but somewhere
behind walls
peeled ceilings
sadness

everything outside
the window
has changed
except the sky
changing all the time

stairway
to the turret
excuse me
no after you
ascending descending

actors in top hats
frock coats
crinoline
as if they too
are being restored

awkward grip
a stove lid
slides out of reach
sudden pain
of the past

parquet floors
built for the silent approach
of the butler
with mail
on a silver tray

trees now
taller than the house
as planned
three or four
generations ago

stern pines
complicated oaks
shaping the ground
around them
imported to last

laughter
through a gap
in the hedge
but on the other side
no one there

in the café
a teenager asks:
is there a job
you can be wealthy at
without being good at maths?

the parents
hover around
the busy toddler
trying to contain
her energy

an old man
leans forward
as he walks . . .
I overtake him
and he is young

quiet road -
the woman
I thought
disliked me
waves and smiles

the children
and their friends
all occupied
with electronica
adults reading

do the fallen petals
beside the flower jar
form a pattern?
the Universe’s
endless mysteries . . .

even this morning
I’m whispering
again and again
to myself:
I so love her body

out of the poverty trap
I allow myself
two candles
incense and
Christmas lights

the card table
is folded up
the card players
have gone to bed
and where is the luck?

                     after 3 long years
                     of our brother- sister
                     relationship
                     my heart woke up
                     to the call of first love

                   Fort santiago:
                   this is the place
                   where calligraphic epitaph
                   should be erected
                   "true love was born here "

                    you left...
                    loneliness hugs me
                    day and night
                    everything is devoid of life
                    even the rainbow is black

                     here at starbucks
                     I drown my sorrows
                     over coffee cups
                     too bad, loneliness knows
                     the strokes to stay alive

                     missing you
                     is like a coffee cup
                     with a lot of holes
                     it holds nothing
                     but emptiness in my soul

                      will you ever know
                      those lonely nights
                      when I was watching comedy
                      but I was crying
                      thinking about you?

A sad book
must keep him company
on his journey -
late at night he calls to say
"My sleeves are wet with tears."

Raga Rageshree
evening melody
beneficial
for you and the planet
playing in an empty room

at the airport
you became
a stranger again
I waved and didn't look back
walked toward the rest of my life

THE OWL'S MESSAGE
Elizabeth Howard               

        soft gray feathers
        by the cherry tree
        only now do I ken
        the owl's message
        which distressed my dreams

        home from surgery
        nursing a wounded breast
        daughter brings cheer
        a bowl of irises
        and chamomile tea

        inviting chairs
        by the glassy pond
        for lack of cane poles
        and a can of red worms
        we pass on by

        vultures rising
        in the corkscrew curve
        a collision of wings
        no need here
        for a triad of crosses

        the tinny clanging
        of country church bells
        I recall grandmother's
        black straw hat
        with fake red cherries

        the mass of bee balm
        in the old lady's garden
        I cannot name
        all the butterflies
        lose count of the varieties

        a van of seniors
        at the highway reststop
        wheelchairs creak
        single-file
        cicadas screeching

        a blue heron rises
        from the pond shallows
        flaps toward the sunset
        its image traveling
        the fixed path

My sons, like possums,
climbing in the loquat tree -
I pause to watch them
through the small binoculars
they gave me for Father's Day

Despite winter chills -
robins at their ablutions
in a reddish dish
on a stump beside a small
bare tree ringed by daffodils

ENVY
Andrew Lansdown

I watch with envy
the small birds in the bamboo.
So now and happy!
They at least need not review
what they did or did not do.

my moods so attuned
to the weather these days
cheered by the sun
saddened by memories that come
with the first scent of rain

powerless to stop
the life changes sweeping through
I watch a tractor
scoop up piles of earth
in the pouring rain

a soft rain falls
after our conversation
I lie awake
letting new possibilities
stir up forgotten dreams

bright yellow tulips
open ever so slowly
after the rain
my fragile hopes still pushing
through the sodden ground

morning rain
smoothes over the crevices
on my street
thinking of you is how
I've learned to fill the spaces

time and distance
seem to blur in the downpour
if I gaze deeper
a replica of your smile
in every droplet of rain

it isn't anything
I can do something about
the tears just do not come
even when
they are supposed to

taking my son
to his first big concert,
during the long long wait
I explain the way things wait
for a magical critical mass

it is  subdued, knowing
no morning available
to wake up and just go
a different way
from the way I've come

it is not happy
this poem of falling snow
in which I've found a deer
it's legs all broken
still alive in the road

the snow piles up
and yet I cannot hide
the fact that the right words
do not come to give
a friend who is dying

sad too
this lack of tears
or a feeling to dance
or sing;
her death too young

how it is
this endless desire
to know more and more
and still feel the less,
this very sorrow of knowing things

you, ready as me
there on the other coast
imagine, to hop a freight
and leave behind all that,
which didn't seem quite right

as we go further
in our marriage
we both voice better
exactly what it is
that bothers us

Red moon
burns in afternoon.
Char the meat upon ice,
Grin like frozen peas in the night,
and dance

steaks removed
from Summer
flowers light as air

blow in the wind
as snowflakes form

autumn
the last red tomato
shivers

in depth of silence
absent bird song

chi tea
steamed milk and honey
salt air

time to write poems
in an oriental silkscreen

island days
lose definition
carousing ghosts

white sky closes-in
boats fly

cherry blossoms
and butterflies
fallen in the grass

spring and summer dance
brief love scenarios

autumn
the last red tomato
shivers

sleeping beings prepare
the next link

four of us
agreed to meet
each week
to share writing
and friendship

while one
of us underwent
treatment
for ovarian cancer
the kind that

prematurely
took her life
before we
could celebrate
more fully

the book
we brought into
this world
from the womb of
her creativity

reminding
us if you treat
what you do
as if it matters
chances are

your dreams
will materialize
like poems
her special
labor of love

You are gone
and now my grief
is gone too
    gold leaves
    beginning

Punished for
my gifts and
beauty
    peonies
    changed by rain

Needing to stop
and count the deaths
     gold nasturtiums bloom
     and God's Mercy
     is enough

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY
K. Ramesh

town square-
a little girl
enters the frame
as i take a snap
of the pigeons

with a camera
i walk around the lake
to the other side
where the swans are
outside the water

 spring afternoon-
 from the stream
 I walk back to
 my camera and jacket
 on the meadow

the kitten and I
stand silently
at the door
watching the darkness
settle among the trees.

a plane journey
my eyes close
i see the bow gliding
on the strings
of a violin

Mozart's symphony
at thirty thousand feet
from the ground
i float with white clouds
around me.

larval in waiting
arcs of palms donate
imperceptible asseveration
         desert nightfall
are we destined to resort

juxtaposing the ancient hairdo?
then the habitual cool of a snake's tongue:
it brings to mind enigmatic paths
nakedness caught by the call of insects

                                   the initiative tickles
                  one toe straight up
                  on the tent post
                  emerging in unopposed charm
                                     seismic foretelling

                  shock wave
                  perhaps
                  in the reeds                  on oars

ankle-deep liberation       in quicksand
quagmire      on green cards      the warmth of blood
silently turning      on a door's eye      opposite walls
in absence of a friend's brown eyes lighting a candle
printing on sand   she walks the way   sandpipers curve
clam colony    the silence of prisoners    at low tide
owl-eyed oak     in a mouth-round hole     no moon
barefoot     sleeping under a tree    bare roots

In memory of the gurgling Euphrates, in view of the Tigris
that carries dumped garbage and the story about vaccination
and unused masks, and by tasting lintels and beans in the warmth
of round flat dough-cake, cooked on dry piles of oil.

How about asking a difficult question:
Why are we dealing today with an overall felt politically motivated
turmoil interrupting the flow of controlled creative energies in most
of our fellow artists?

My innermost concept and what I can express corresponds only partly
with what we watched earlier on television.

I am trying to point to the fact that there are still old lanterns for sale to
find a subject for going to war. In response guilt is felt- guilt that makes
further attempts to act possibly look more confusing.

May 2003      lips
                      afraid of azure
                      foreshadowed
                      by a bell
the bell on waters   unheard

calm winds          in the oval of an egg         already wings.

my companion
does not know what today is
I watch her
the blue vein beating beneath
skin frail as a baby bird's

together
we sit on the bench
waiting, uneasy
her daughter does not return
and hands begin to tremble

I picture her
scraping ice from a windshield
the missing daughter
deciding to leave
her fretful, white-haired child

the old woman
is shy at first, then bold,
telling me
the bench is cold, for August,
and she is scared

flat blue eyes
look past me, searching
I turn my back
the promise has not been kept
she asks things not mine to give

AS SUCH
Sheila Murphy

Posthumosity encrypts what we are primed to celebrate while toting wingspan if and only if in freeze-frame. My personal experience retains its holding pattern as a cropped-while-germinating seedling. Scampering reserved for the injurious close-up of the place where salt achieves waist depth. Wavelets dry through summer. Slapstick doves are bones of stressed errata tossed into communiqués. With cloves so near the heart, a darker sweetness trailing paths.

Pensions denied, despite the luminarias defining hillsides before hilltops

MAY, THEREABOUTS, 2003
Sheila Murphy

Tonight the shining presence sits before a screen and diagrams her genealogy while I read Walker Percy. It is half-eleven as they say across. I have been socializing for my business. For some hours of the day my day is less a pair of gloves than gesture that an artist thought routine unconscious of the bird defined by chaste or lustful flight.

She intuits her own whereabouts in time. The diagram she s making shows the roots and branches. I am on her chart the saplings bend as method and of course apart from thought. I have chosen something spiral that stays open while I sip and swallow green tea made by French and English and Chinese experts. Our water is reverse osmosis, and tonight I have already flossed the moment I say winter you’ll misunderstand I m wearing this once-washed shirt commemorating National History Day in Arizona.

The jet pilot who just showed up on her chart almost became an astronaut. In her childhood he let her be exposed to a wasp s nest and be stung; that, after letting her run through reeds and to be sliced up.

I do not know the Flynn or Murphy charts precisely. I would like to some time. I don t envy my young self at middle points contentment is the only thing that easily exceeds exhilaration.

The cup I drink from is classy matte black with shiny letting with an image that reads a business name and drawing of a door.

Last night one of our neighbors reported he had sixty tiles to go of the 300 total for his condominium with each tile weighing 7.5 pounds.

I have three-quarters of the old identity remaining that feels like a mere five-eighths. I drink plain, low-fat kefir on account of liking the tart taste and feeling soothed by it and I no longer worry there are sufficient writing instruments and booklets in this house plus blank CDs.

Some of the information about dates of death she knows is right here in this house. She reads what she already has aloud to herself and to me and when she taps the keys it is so delicate and feminine her white shirt made to fit a little man looks both formal and informal. Her skin and small frame make her look decades younger than chronology dictates.

MOMENT
Sheila Murphy

I would trespass on definitions of perfume
that curvature contains.

Just now a group of butterflies
seeks flowers on a shrub.

One with large, more graceful wings
a touch transparent with ephemera,

as a mist about to break through
the full aroma of these blossoms.