Only My Heart - Noris Binet

You took a bite

from my heart 

     I was distracted

by the mind

         Then

only by my heart

     It happened

one day

I did not know

 exactly when

     it doesn’t matter…

           Because

     even now

my heart is pounding

           every time

    I wake up.

  ***

Feather of the Eagle - Robyn Makaruk

He struggled to bring air to his lungs after riding the rapids that propelled them both over fifty-foot falls. His grip was still strong on the child he’d carried through the ordeal who lay lifeless yet, but after administering his own healing breath there came a flutter of eyes, then coughing, spewing, and the young one returned to the living.

The Tribe welcomed them both back to the village, their voices raised in songs of praise for such bravery.

Before the Tribal Council, the young warrior recounted how he had tracked the child for two days before reaching him wading into the river.

The Chief spoke: “I give you this Feather of Eagle through whom the Great Spirit speaks to us about life. It symbolizes trust, honor, strength, wisdom, power, freedom and more. It is sacred to all our People. Wear it with pride”.

Going Home - Beverly Koepplin

I wonder where my grandmother’s heart went

when it went home.

Surely not back to the mother country

where, as an orphaned girl,

she trundled carts of soldiers’ 

bodies through the streets.

Surely not back to the farm 

in the North Dakota countryside

where she spent her days

spinning in the dust,

like a lost whirling dervish, 

never finding her way,

blown like the thistles 

across the brown flat lands.

I don’t know that this 

kind, gentle heart ever found a home.

I wonder where my mother’s heart went

When it went home.

Surely not back to that farm 

where she worked from dawn to dusk

minding her father and her brothers 

and the livestock, ever toiling,

doing her homework by the light 

of the kerosene lamp

and hoping that the words she read 

would somehow carry her away,

a magic carpet ride to a world 

where there was sometimes surcease.

I suspect her heart went back to Montana

because, like me, she never found 

a true home in California.

I wonder where my heart will go

when it goes home.

I know it will not be North Dakota 

for I, too, was lost there.

I know it will not be the San Joaquin Valley, 

where I never found my way, either.

Both are flat lands that run to the 

edges of the earth and leave me nowhere to hide.

It might be San Francisco 

as somewhere in the fog by the sea, I found myself.

It could be this valley where the mountains 

guard the precious vines and me.

But I know that my heart 

will go back to Montana, too,

and my mother and I will sit by the shores 

of Lake Como and listen to peace.

                        ***

The Way Home - Russ Bedord

Dumb with wonder

at every turn in the road:

there is significance

in endless wandering.

Who has seen mountains,

gazed into canyons,

peered across plains,

and seen the same?

It's never the same,

yet seems so.

Shared impressions

that cannot stand

lengthy discussions.

The Grand Canyon, 

painted magnificence

in different colors:

red in the setting sun,

dark at night,

shaded by the time of day,

season, and density of air.

Painted by imaginations

made real by

impossible distances

and riotous color.

Still struck dumb,

there is significance

in magnificent views,

in riotous colors,

in sun and shade,

in wandering minds

on endless roads

seeking the way home.

             ***

Birds - Noris Binet

Birds

Flying everywhere

gliding on the air

like thoughts  in the mind,

they are my closest companion

Wherever  I go

birds and thoughts 

touch each other --

Kissing --

and falling apart.

         ***

Pájaros  Noris Binet

Pájaros 

Vuelan dondequiera

deslizándose en el aire

como los pensamientos de mi mente

ellos son mis compañeros mas cercanos

dondequiera que voy

los pájaros y los pensamientos 

se tocan-besándose

y separándose de nuevo. 

                  ***

Water -Robyn Makaruk

His camel had borne him and the young boy

for six days across the desert,

the relentless sun burning lips to crackliings.

It had been a journey of desperation

to save the last of a family, annihilated by war.

At night under the velvet blanket of stars

the hope of reaching the oasis

was predominate on his mind.

Belief in himself and the human spirit

superseded all other thoughts

When the sun presented distant images

he knew that what shimmered on the horizon

was just a mirage, phantasms to be discounted,

for to reach the destination

more days of travel lay ahead.

And it was his faith absolute

that brought them to this place,

where the well

with water for all species’ survival

was waiting.

                      ***

The Marsh - Joshua Gramse

I think the marsh sleeps, but with one eye open and a mouth that curls strangely. A snoring chorus of insect things accompanies this melancholy slumber.  Dozing really, activity may rouse it into stifling all and making silence renewed. Jealous of the dryer climes, the bog will drink high ground when it can; gurgling swallows echo in it's bubbling stomach.  Straining the ear, one can hear muffled tales of cold, unblinking ancientness creaked out by the corroded mail-links worn by those who sleep under the peat. The bog stench speaks of low tide, alligator-backed but not tropical mangrove or lively Amazonian lagoon. Youth, like dryness, is a concept unknown within the bowels of the slough.  No crocodiles but rather afancs here, things of the bitter north that swish in murk. Noses cold, legs itching from sweat, lone travelers move warily through reed and rut, stagnant pool and loon nest.  The burning light of home is always too far off.  Mislead by foxfire, an unholy hoax, the marsh becomes a laughing web.  An eternity of lonesome souls have had their footprints stamped in and then erased by the ooze.

An enormous stone wheel grinds slowly, turned only by wounded eddies, a current spilling from the last breaths of dying hatchlings.  Travelers become transfixed by still pools. Their circadian rhythms get sticky, gummed up. Something clicks slowly, deep. A deliberate and methodical rhythm like clockwork, its springs festering with squirming swamp-things.  Too deep for the ear, the clicking is heard by the teeth, the bottom of the skull, the innards catch it and move in time.  Looking beyond with eyes of purest fog, Ink is the water that laps childlike at your edges.  Cold fell,  phosphorescent specters exhaling smoky coils of mist into the thornbush hair of a quietly moaning nymph.  Soaked to the bone, the reeds whisper at sullen waterfowl.  Some birds stay too long in the marsh, they stop moving and sprout with angry grasses.

There is a stone in the marsh that shrieks due to its proximity to that which is buried beneath it. Hunters have been rent asunder and become food for the tiny things when straying too close. The springs of Gehenna reach to our world's surface in the marsh, many nooks of hell are housed by it.  With hair of snow and eyes wild, some return to the hearth after mere hours lost in the fen. Secrets, mysteries that ruin the pink mind, making it gray and sodden, encrusted with broken mollusk shells and putrescence, these things a stumbling lamb may receive. The morass belches Saint Elmo's fire, the blinking eye of many a peat-fleshed troll, moss-furred and hungry.  Toothless, they suck victims to a dark and pungent place.

Having crawled out of the peat, hairless and sun sensitive, so too does one go to the peat.  Despite repeated bathing in the new, moss grows in neglected fissures. The night parts, sun shy areas of consciousness that gibber with black tongues behind soap fragrant ears, still squirm in the marsh.  Worms raise young in one's belly. They murmur in sleepy tones, soothing the shock of decomposition. Parasites become beloved children.

Frustrated, soulless and sexless, the marsh has no lover but is always pregnant. It births the putrid by parthenogenesis. It sees the things that live in its skin as progeny.  It grins at the things breeding and its pools, longing to nurture and strangle them. Swimming in itself, It tries its hand at mothering, but its sympathy is acidic; corrosion is its very breath.  It cares wickedly.

Having no true children, the bog is always longing.  It desires outside life, it is a thing of snares and traps. It cannot hide its true face completely, but will try. With a gurgling voice of mock sweetness, it bids the traveler, "lie in me child, weary you must be. Motion is tiresome. A thing-of-forever in me, you shall become. Though it seems to choke, the mist shall preserve you. Lie down child, lie down."

It lies about its lack of movement. It moves inside. Deep under it all there is a space where the roots, the rot, and the wet to give way to the deep orb. It rotates way down and keeps the humming click synchronized with the mosquito's incessant buzzing.It is a perpetual motion machine powered on quicksand suction and the chemical fermentation of dead matter.  Whole histories are down there, lost pack animals and men. Small bubbles hint at things nibbling underneath, forgotten days when, with a belly full of blackberries and millet, the shaven adulteress was cast down from her lynch-spot. Swallowed by greedy muck, she roared at her role beneath a dim sun.  She is still down there, and is kept company by cruel wishes and millions of teeth gnashing in unison. This is the engine of the quagmire.

                                             ***