Here Is My Feast Of Crystal Splendor - a poem by Tasha Halpert

Here Is My Feast Of Crystal splendor

 

Now the landscape is still.

Grasses are stiff, rimed with frost.

Bare trees sleep,

dreaming of warmth as yet  distant.

But a new beauty imbues their branches

their essential selves emerge

in a pattern of graceful tracery

against the winter sky.

 

 

I am become ice

caressing the garden with my cold kisses,

taming wavelets to stillness.

Here is my feast of crystal splendor

displayed in masses of diamonds

that sparkle everywhere to see.

How beautiful I am, and how pristine.

Relish my beauty,  but do not touch me

lest you suffer from the frost.

 

I magnify the light,

extending its power to dazzle the eye.

Soft snow shrouds me in a white fur cloak,

muffling sound, softening hard edges.

But I crack branches,

scour stones, and buffet cliffs.

Locked out of life I pry at openings to get in.

I am envious of warmth, 

and will not melt before my time,

nor give way when the light begins to lengthen.

 

Some call me cruel, others kind,

knowing that  all life needs to sleep,

that old forms crumble to make way for new.

But  light  persists. At last  I soften in the warmth,

beguiled,  I loosen my clasp until

irresistibly compelled I yield myself at last

to Spring's embrace and fall asleep

to drowse the warm away,

knowing that I will wake again one day.

 

Tasha Halpert

The Apples and The Cantaloupes - a poem by Jurgen Braunohler

THE APPLES AND THE CANTALOUPES

The World is such a fruity place,
You can toss it for a loop.
My Mother was the juggling Ace ...
With Apples and the Cantaloupes.

Sweets and fruits a-plenty
Were the visions in her childhood mind.
War and poverty left her hungry
In ways that were just most unkind.

She left behind that ravaged land
And came by ship to Canada.
What she saw then was so grand:
With fruits that made her shout "Aha!"

Our kitchen had enough to spare
With food from every group,
But always in the corner
Were the Apples and the Cantaloupes.

My Mother was a wonder
With all the things that she could do.
Whenever I had a question,
She reached for a handy Cantaloupe.

"Mummy, how are babies made?"
This posed no major problem:
An Apple and a Cantaloupe
Sure gave the explanation.

Questions about the Sun and Moon?
Why we have our night and day?
A flashlight on some dancing fruits
Lit things right away.

Evenings on the sofa
In our stormbound summer cottage,
A plate of peaches came at me:
Good health was Mother's message.

But when girls became the issue
 and this boy got quite silly,
"I'll fix your wagon, you!"
Was my seasoned Mother's play.

She sent me to an artists' school
To sketch and draw bare naked women.
I came home each time in a state of drool,
But my Mother saw the omen.

I feasted on this subject daily,
In every shape and form,
Until I got so fully sated
That I became quite bored.

Women, Apples, Cantaloupes,
The Baubles dancing in my brain,
Became so really tedious
That I wanted off the train.

With all my drawings done and stuffed into my tote,
Mother asked me once again just what it was I drew...
As my Baubles now were sailboats,
She winked and passed the Cantaloupe!

Jurgen Braunohler,
Mother's Day, 2010.

PETER THE SWELL - a poem by Jurgen Braunohler

PETER THE SWELL. 

 There's a noble fleet of whalers, somewhere in Newfielands. 
 They're sailed by Peter Myers and his crew of Merry Hams. 
 They sing right in the shower. They sing far out at sea. 
 They sing way up at Eddie Blacks, and 'round the Christmas tree (Yo!)

Peter is a swell guy, who sailed the Newfie seas. 
 He steamed across to Port au Basques in a great and merry breeze. 
 He didn't have his dinner, and he didn't have his tea. 
 But he had his darling Newfie wife, and to Twillingate went he

Now Jurgen is a bugger, who will sail to Port au Basques. 
 He'll swim across the Cabot Strait, when his sailboat breaks its mast. 
 He'll never have his dinner, and he'll never have his tea. 
 He doesn't even have a wife! So he's gone to find one, see?

When the years have gone and passed us, and we've retired from the sea,
we'll sit around at Port au Basques, and drink our Newfie tea. 
 We'll have our darling wifiedoos, and eat our dinners too.
  Hopefully we'll live that long, sooooooo, Happy New Year, to You!

             a note from  the poet, Jurgen Braunohler:   One more thing:  Black's was a photo lab, and I was belting out sea songs in the darkroom to Peter's amusement.  I mention this so you will know what all the Blacks and singing business is about.

 

 

There's a Bitter-Sweetness here -- a poem by Yotanka Coicou

THERE'S A BITTER-SWEETNESS HERE
 

Every expiration teaches something
Death-destined....tender rasping

The drip drip of intravenous existence

Where words run on for much too long

We have never been closer....they say
Yet....you're not the flesh....we knew

There's a bitter-sweetness here
We can't endure

The wailing
We have not yet composed

The shooting star is dead
We lie....wrapped in abstraction

So lonely....so lonely together
So many ancient questions

Fester beneath the skin
In the progression of discrete collapse

The sliced Earth waits for burial
A cemetery....for trusting seeds

We shake the nettles from our clothes
The burrs....clinging for....dear life

Oracle....for no written word
Bellows....that spark

By permission of the author,
Yotanka Coicou
©  Telling Tales   2010