Three Trees at Solstice by Mary Finnin

Comes with autumn the spent moment,
When, polarised to stillness,
The soul thereafter waits on death
As oaks  on winter,
As oaks by winter water.
So stands the sun for springing and failing time;
And a life ending is less than a stream failing
Until, sunk deep in a white meander,
Black clouds settle like swans at brood,
And flows again the white water.

The silver tree of the stream
Fails not for the sea,
For the thirst-hewn rocks of the valley;
But fails the red, bright tree
In each man’s breast—
Drooping to winter’s rest;
Fails the yellow tree
Of each day’s light—
Fails from sight,
Fails in the west.

From: “The Red Page” in The Bulletin, Volume 73, No. 3787, 10 September 1952, p. 2.
(https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-525399936/)

Date: 1952

By: Mary Finnin (1906-1992)

Driving Back Over the Blue Ridge by Moya Cannon

you say that the leaves are late in turning.
Half way up the wooded hill to our right
the sun has decanted itself
into a single maple tree.

There are days like that
which sing orange and red
in the forest of our ordinary green.

These are the days we hang our souls upon
as high above them the sun withdraws.

From: https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=8137

Date: 2010

By: Moya Cannon (1956- )

And Scene by Martin Monahan

Where I come from, we talk to our women.
We do not drug them with plants.

On a hill, tearing pink melon, crudely
split by an angled penknife,
hands scooping
clumps of seeded mulch, and juice,
all sticky, tipped into your singing mouths or lapped
from hollow palms flecked with the dapple-foam of spit,
you and your friends, in playful feast,
re-enact an early scene from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner’s
greatest film, I’d say.

Then me, in another city,
and my then life
unknown to you, leaving
a school-bus a stop early just
to buy the video, seen twice by then at the Sutton Odeon, saran-wrapped
and stickered, stacked in a cut-out of Costner by the counter, the day it
was first released,
at Erdington High Street Blockbuster’s;
absurdly, it was more than fifteen pounds I paid.

Now, I’m well aware this is something slight.
Yet it was important for one moment when we met
that we both could quote from it.
And though not the only thing we had, of course,
worth noting still; since
love seeps more from this than chivalry.

From: https://www.themanchesterreview.co.uk/?p=2549&page=4

Date: 2013

By: Martin Monahan (19??- )

Onion by Anne Compton

Weighs more than it looks: Should do, my father says, bent among
October rows. I’ve come the yellow corridors to be with him.

Like a star compacted by gravity – that dense.
Nebula of particles, fused and lit. Unus, its Latin name.

Best dug at first frost: Hard, though, to be rid of the soil specks
in the outer sheath. Iron flavour in the winter sandwich.

Graded by flesh colour and as to keeping – storage or straightaway.

The Vidalia, in pale-coloured skin, similar to all things fresh –
sweetest forthwith. Thick-skinned storage, a deeper flavour.

Decades gone, he could be starlight, could be what’s
encrypted in cells. My cells. Information’s never lost.

Heaven from earth, according to him. Readable parchment –
in layers – had we the cipher to decode it. Circle by circle.

At the root-end, there are tear-producing compounds,
where it gripped earth. This is true of all temporary things.

About this part, turn aside at the last.

From: https://www.obrienfoundation.ca/en/in-the-news/a-new-poem-by-dr-anne-compton-1986

Date: 2013

By: Anne Compton (1947- )

Elegy for the River by Philip Kolin

The river is never random.

It is history’s ledger, scribbling
the obituary of reeds and moss,

the thinning of birch and brake,
receding marshes,

the invasion of rigs—
spills, slime traps, smoke.

Once the river conducted a symphony
of painters: red-winged blackbirds,

blue streaked herons, yellow warblers,
egrets as white as clouds.

But their colors leached
as they thrashed, wailed, and lunged for

scraps of oxygen
in the suffocating air.

There are no feathers today to take home
for reliquary boxes.

Silvered rain used to propagate the river
multiplying luminous dawns, silky dusks.

Once the incarnation of time, the river
has no more seasons to mark.

Now the river is on a journey to
emptiness,

snaking through a desert of owls and cactus,
the moon, a forsaken memory.

From: https://deltapoetryreview.com/v2i4-philip-kolin.html

Date: 2020

By: Philip Kolin (1945- )

If I Had Taken My Mother’s Advice on Marriage by Norma Ketzis Bernstock

If I had married a more traditional man,
comfortable in suits and ties,
a man who’d shake my father’s hand,
a mensch for my parents’ sake.

I dated Ken dressed in polyester green
who boasted about a medical career.
Smart, handsome, polite and kind,
but not the man for me.

I initially liked the baby-faced guy
except for a slight macho flaw:
He’d ram his car into construction site cones.
Definitely not for me.

I did like Mel who slicked back his hair,
looked like a rock ‘n roll star.
Sexy and built but whined when he spoke.
He wasn’t IT man for me.

I loved the rebellious Rabbi’s son
who lived in a hippy commune.
His kisses were heaven but he wanted more—
I wouldn’t put out for him.

Lenny serenaded with Sinatra tunes,
corny and much too reserved.
He couldn’t be seduced, as much as I tried—
Too much heat for him.

My mother disliked the man I chose
who wore jeans and army fatigues.
He hugged like a bear, squeezed like a vise—
she feared that I couldn’t breathe.

From: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/if-i-had-taken-my-mothers-advice-on-marriage-poem-by-norma-ketzis-bernstock-if-i-poetry-and-prose-series/

Date: 2016

By: Norma Ketzis Bernstock (19??- )

The New Warsaw Ghetto by Naomi Quiñonez

The new Warsaw ghetto
is around the corner
on the Texas Mexico
border down the street
on the California border
the Arizona border

Publicly financed
corporately owned
government operated
enclaves of despair

The new Warsaw ghetto
metastasizes
in the not so good ole USA
in detention camps
in cages in isolated
windowless prisons
driven like spikes
into the southern border

In the new Warsaw ghetto
children are torn from
their families
and warehoused
like like animals
Shivering under
aluminum covers
or left to sleep on
unforgiving streets

In the new Warsaw ghetto
tear gas smothers
and the feds de-mother,
thousands of refugee children.

They are red meat
for the haters
for men of means.
and for mean men.

From: http://www.poetrymagazine.com/poetry_magazine_zawinski_naomi_quinonez.html

Date: 2020

By: Naomi Quiñonez (19??- )

Fragmental by Sarah Davies

A man with diamonds
in his teeth is sleeping
on the street

April
please turn the year
around

After the mending,
I find a pin in the fold-
small wound by the heart

A stone in your shoe,
however small, will change
how you walk this earth

Still, the words arrive,
like little boats and freedom-
language will make room

Cloud in my breath
so I become cloud, so
cloud becomes me.

From: https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2023/06/five-poems-by-sarah-davies.html

Date: 2023

By: Sarah Davies (19??- )

Ars poetica (Art of poetry) by Farideh Hassanzadeh

Politicians, when speaking of peace
I remember the bloody flags,
the tombs of the unknown soldiers
and the rain of falling bombs.
Even when they speak of liberty
I see the darkness of solitary cells
and I hear the howls of prisoners.

But when a poet speaks of his dreams
for peace and liberty
I imagine a man, making love,
his eyelids closed,
his shoulders shining with dews,
and his heart beating so ardently
as the heart of a bird
who knows how to sing in a cage
to invite the other birds
from the far frosts
lost in the everlasting fogs.

From: https://poetrybreakfast.com/2024/05/21/ars-poetica-art-of-poetry-a-poem-by-farideh-hassanzadeh/#more-11528

Date: 2024

By: Farideh Hassanzadeh (19??- )

Recovering Catholic by Jennifer Lagier

I watched my mother, grandmother,
and great-grandmother
willingly crucify themselves
because they believed heaven
would reimburse them
for their day-to-day hells.
They obeyed without question,
passively turned the other cheek,
believed misogynist mumbo-jumbo,
died without having lives,
bought a crock of Vatican shit.

I’m tired of being a
good Italian Catholic,
raised on cautionary tales
of sacrificed martyrs,
denial and guilt.
I cut my teeth on torturous
stations of the cross,
spent Saturdays in catechism,
Sundays at mass.
Now I’m ready for thou shall,
want to break rules,
blow off responsibility,
sleep past noon,
stand naked in front
of the picture window,
shake my tits at the postman,
drink tequila shots on a Monday,
drop acid, experiment with mushrooms,
carelessly fuck a succession of strangers,
come loudly and often
without a single regret.

From: https://www.syndicjournal.us/cover-syndic-no-12/poetry-6-poems-by-jennifer-lagier/

Date: 2022

By: Jennifer Lagier (19??- )