At Lake Minerva
Clouds brush by my notebook to lose cohesion
downhill: No smoke from someone’s campfire.
Chipmunks beg — or worse — near the snack bar.
Fix your mind on this moment, and the mountain
asks: “Who are you?” But you hear “Who am I?”
Poetry
Poetry: Stropharia semiglobata
Stropharia semiglobata
I awoke to see
pupils floating
in balls of light
In that shade
enchanted by
the music of
Time missed,
they hovered
in the darkness.
Like a guru
meditating.
Strange creatures
haunting every room
of my brain. Oval and
mushroom shaped.
Like the red and white
knapsack of a dwarf, so
mischievous and charming.
As quaint and extraterrestrial
as an English fairy tale.
Poetry: Wild Predator Attacks
Wild Predator Attacks
What’s the chance that you will
be attacked by a wild predator?
Slim. Attacks are so rare each one
rates its own listing on Wikipedia.
If the 20th Century was an indicator,
you’ll more likely die domestically.
Black bears, wolves, and mountain lions
killed fewer Americans than lightning,
bathtub drownings, or getting crushed
underneath falling vending machines.
The most recent reported black bear
attack in the Adirondack Mountains
(2018) came when a man hospitalized
after his ATV crashed lied, reporting
how he had fought off a black bear.
Poetry: I Know You Know
I Know You Know
I accepted your apology
implicitly, but the aftertaste
of those emails stuck in
between my teeth like a
kernel of popcorn. I tried to
pick it out, you know I did.
Yet, it remains below the
crevice of the gums, a half
buried fleck of fake gold.
Poetry: After Snowfall
After Snowfall
I have come to like
the simple symmetry of
snow-blowing
our driveway.
It is like erasing
a great white board
revealing
a dazzling surface
on which to write again
the equations for
the rest of our lives.
About the Poet: Gene Ervine loves the crisp snowy winters of Alaska. He grew up in the cool, wet woods of the Pacific Northwest praying for snow. When his wife Nancy took a teaching job in a one-room school in a logging camp they moved to Alaska “for a year,” that adventure has stretched into lifetimes.
He studied English Literature and Creative Writing at Western Washington University in Bellingham. Exposure to the Imagists and Beats have shaped his writing. Gene worked as an exhibit planner and writer for the Department of the Interior. He now lives in Anchorage. For over forty years Alaska’s varied landscapes and seasons have inspired him.
Poetry: Amanda! Ngawethu!
Amanda! Ngawethu!
Like a shell of goodness surrounding our raw, fragile earth
It is built upon, added to, and altered in meaning
Every second a brave someone speaks up against the barbarity of prejudice
based on outside appearance
I ask you this
If you were looking at earth from a far distance
Would you see a shallow, insignificant nothing
No different from the trillions of tons of debris drifting in leaden blackness
Or would you find beauty within the protective shell that every life form known in
existence calls home
A shelter of color, culture, diversity, perspective, community, love.
Not a wall to hide under and to block out adventure and experience
But a filter, a reminder that the unknown is something to be welcomed,
celebrated and explored
Not to demolish and flatten
And what is the unknown
It is something different and unfamiliar
But if the world, if our world, is about perspective
Then the word ‘our’ should mean one whole
A rich unity of difference
But that unity will be ripped apart without acceptance, understanding and
equality.
Let this be a statement of power
Not over each other
Not the right to take over or criticize
But the power to fan the flame of contagion that is love
We are one, but we are different
And that difference is what should unite us
12 year-old Sophia DeMasi of Clifton Park wrote this poem after being inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem “His Day Is Done” about the passing of Nelson Mandela.
Poetry: Little Boy Lost
Little Boy Lost
I asked him “What are you afraid of?”
“Dunno,” he said, “something.” So I said
“Well, you’re in the right world!” — in case
he’d reincarnated from another realm, like
old Buddhists exit meditation with strange
looks on their faces, glints in their eyes —
“because this world is so replete with some-
things, you can spend many lives and loves
ricocheting from one something to another
something, until somethings seem to have
an n minus one relation to other somethings,
implying endless fears if you’re fearful, but
if not, I suggest you downplay reincarnation.
Instead, stop and smell the flowers, maybe
start with carnations then follow your nose
— like the girl whose seasonal walks forever
returned her home, nose dusted with pollen.”
Poetry: In This Time of Survival
In This Time of Survival
Like pickled
radishes sealed
in mason jars
with cloth fabric
toppers, the world
will come to need
poems again,
carried in wicker
baskets from the
root cellar by the tool
shed, they will be
brought inside and
opened with that
vacuum pop sound
of glass twisted.
Poetry: Did He Say Postmodern?
Did He Say Postmodern?
He told me the wild and wilderness
weren’t wild at all but cultural.
I said, “You mean like buttermilk
that has been set out to go sour?”
He said he didn’t know about that,
but yes, wildness was a construct,
a cultural construct, something
made up and dependent on where
and how you lived, maybe what
your ancestors thought about life.
“If a mountain lion bites through
your thigh, is that such a construct?”
I asked. I could sense that he thought
this was a joke. So, I told him: “Go
take a hike in the woods!” as I was
exasperated now. “Oh no,” he said,
“I don’t think I’d feel comfortable.”
Poetry: In the Biofield
In the biofield
farm hands
announce
sheer light
your cantaloupe
blonde hair
the way vines
relax over the
necks of grapes