Contest Poems in Long River Run are listed on the bottom of the contest page at: Contests
Pages 22 to 41
Yvon J. Cormier, West HavenPrelude to Salvation
I have wasted you --
Pages torn from this book freely given,
my decrying the significance of a life page lost.
Here written are the gifts which escaped
superstitious attachment. What once noted
numbers, locations and names were
set free with eternity as witness.
The breadth from which these terms came
is not my own. And these terms were brought
in confirmation rather than needy pleas feigning
regret over something never forfeited.
The scribes of the new times have rallied
from this ink, this world music, and from the art
of unity gathered by the spirit’s insistence.
I have wandered through caverns
Strode canals and treachery of cannibalistic love
Free from torment of an empty page,
It’s emptiness stricken by light of life.
And those numbers, those names,
And places I may never go,
And people I may never know, Pages tore
rigidly as if to grip surety of my choice.
They were things of thought and hollow of living,
mere tokens of a static realm.
For thought could only conceal what lie beyond
the peak of Purgatory, where all men women
and children convey their consumptive complexity.
Madness vanquished many of those whom ignored
the futility of resistance-Those in agreement ascending.
The seeker receives only with heart and spirit for safe passage.
Wonder of the mystery reveals mystical secrets of time in silence
For no word can shift eons from before
And the Sage’s sweeping Time’s front door,
And the Buddha’s ear lobes collect messages
as do birds in flight land,
as the sand from the Ganges, the Nile,
as sand on the ballroom floors of Paradise.
And all sacred texts, with the elements, slip sundry sentiment
For what they hint of bears many names yet remains nameless.
Dominic Cuchara, Southbury
News Report
Where many stars appear in mystery nights,
Just pin to points of deepest in the darks
At other end of known as Universe
That shine not clear to trackers on earth,
Are bodies racing and blipping on a screen;
Where older stars are ending, newer start.
We can't conceive in familiar conceits
What travel time illimitable and more
That travel space with magnitude at core;
That do not show themselves to be designed
For mythic signs and for their special charms;
As bodies glowing bright at night in yards.
The eye that furthest sees did dot and trace
What's left and saved from worlds that first were made:
Such beam of sun that once returned to dust;
What ruled a yesterday appeared of grace –
Resembled Sol - but swelled to red in dust.
That beam still flows, now climbs up yet to us
To pass trillions of clones of mirror stars.
No clues of dawns are from the nights that ended
Where oneness started with, the biggest bang;
Such world perceived - without a voice that's heard.
Perfect creation rules all lands and shows us We,
Who rules from the greenest patch to ever see
What's earth in darks, as we progress to light;
Just where it's turning in the mystery nights.
Lorna Morris Cyr, Bristol
Sheep Dipped
(Term for type of undercover CIA agent)
Dedicated to MDW
This beach where you bring me,
harbors us in remote darkness.
I hold your hand, hard, branded
because you are alive
and the codes have changed.
Sheppard from Colby College
you proudly became a flocked operative
to forage in fields of Central Intelligence
Our age of innocence passed,
sheep dipped in the arena
of undercover wolf's clothing,
laying with the lions.
You were bait thrown back
like a sea tossed toy.
Secrets from your last breath
floated to surface in new identity.
Your grave site surrounded by sober
statues bearing empty closed coffin,
men in black, almost laughable.
In your humble humor you do laugh
from an Alaskan hillside as you
exclaim, "Oh yeah,
conspiracy theory at work!"
Gerald Degenhardt, Madison
The Farm
"The farm, the farm!" she cried, "As though
we only eat and breathe and live
to keep...to keep the farm alive.
I'm done! I've nothing more to give."
He grunted into the silver
light of their room, letting the air
mend their difference. Talk, he thought,
settled cows in stalls, made peace in prayer.
Outside, across the county road,
the moon had slipped into the barn,
sweeping away the darkness
of the stalls, the loft, the farm.
She lay in bed twisting the sheet.
I've nothing she thought, not a dress
to wear at church if he should die -
nothing the farm does not possess.
Alongside her he was alone.
Six more Holstein would take the herd
to thirty, increase the milk a fifth,
but I can't buy them with my word.
The moon had settled into corners,
found the cat curled near the milk pan,
splayed the chickens lying in the roost,
whitened walls while shadows ran.
"Auggie," she struggled, "don't let me
look at my thoughts in the moonlight.
Talk to me. I'm so afraid
the farm's stolen our love outright."
He wanted to scream for her fear,
"No, no, it hasn't!" Instead, above
the sheet he found her moonlit hand.
"The farm, Myrna, is where we love."
The moon searched the toolshed, the ice house
looking for more black to mute;
It took their bed and room and them
and lightened all, the farm, the fruit.
Mintoor G. De Kock, Gales Ferry
From Whence Came Life
From whence came life itself, it’s beyond your imagination,
It’s life itself; yes images and expressions of tomorrow’s dream;
As we grow part of what’s going on here on planet earth
The grace of yesteryears holding on from here to eternity.
Stretching out dance madness as we dance the truth
It’s life itself
Somewhere in time hotter than July Genesis sun,
What’s going on?
Spirit in the mood to create again.
Inspiration for thee,
Come from within to dance in the sunshine
As we grow another year.
Tomorrow’s dream for another year’s anniversary
We dance the truth from here to eternity.
He the Lord of Life has made everything beautiful in its time,
For His own good pleasure.
Joel Fried, Canton
Decay
Peaceful relationships
Tumultuous passivity
You had his heart
For awhile
He yours
What happens to couples
Pheromone depletion
Sexual disintegration
Why
The Erosion of desire
Discontented
With the love
You have
It’s not enough
If you were
Hostage
Of anything
A full body cast
A jail cell
A crumbling mind
You would
Cherish
The merest touch
The simplest acknowledgement
The slightest
Tenderness
Yet now
You argue
You rail
You wish for else
And
Elsewhere
Your love
Decayed
Well beyond its half-life
You contemplate moving
To the new
Already
Awaiting decomposition
Doris Frost, Kensington
Vernal Equinox
March wind’s a runaway train, lurching and keening
as it roars down the steep slope of memory
carrying dead leaves in its wake.
It spreads the cold around and sends birds into hiding
stealing their slumber in the half-light of dawn.
It whispers secrets under the eaves
and topples trash bins at the curb
spilling leavings and spoilage of an extravagant life.
Birch trees kneel in prayer
the knotted oak frets and chafes, kissing the air
while flags on poles unfurl silk of each stripe and star
emblems of hope in a world of confusion.
At daybreak wind-tossed kites of paper
dance and swirl in the morning sun.
Tony Fusco, West Haven
Some Things about Rain
Rain gets together with its friends and breaks into houses,
laughing at our sand bags in rivers. It floats earthworms
to the surface of the driveway pale and exposed.
Rain falls on the good and the bad
Rain on a child’s window means he won’t be going to
the park today. Perfect weather for a funeral,
who can tell the mourners? Droplets will mark your suede jacket.
Rain means you won’t come out today and I won’t see you.
Rain runs the ink in love notes
in goodbye notes
makes you have to guess at the words.
Rain washes the world clean,
causes two people, warm bodies
under an umbrella to touch.
It makes a brook where I sink tiny pebbles.
Rain fills the well, keeps the pipes from spitting air,
softens the earth, patters a soothing melody.
Rain empties the streets and fills the coffee shops,
the bookstores. Craters the parking lot, disappearing
in seconds. Makes you smile to duck
in a doorway.
Rain in a barrel makes clothes smell sweet,
precedes the fog of sleepy summer mornings.
Straightens stems of droopy gardens greens.
Brings the boy to the attic toys to play.
It falls on the good and the bad.
Emerson Gilmore, Hebron
Sheepherding in Dun Chaoin
A half dozen spring lambs
don’t know they wait
to learn the bark and nip
of the shepherd’s dog that,
instinct being what it is,
never knew he knew
how to heard but did it
as if there need not be
a God.
The adults, burly with fur,
stare down at my alien pen,
bleat and ease their droppings
into the grateful, moist grass
that doesn’t know how deathly
close the sheep crop the crop.
Ghosts of monks clinging
like lichen to rock huts
still pray for a comfort
the grass and sheep and lambs and dogs
don’t seem to need.
At the appointed time
the shepherd comes, sends
the dog into the herd,
stands at the gate and,
ulcerous with worry, counts.
Nicholas Giosa, M.D.
We Were Perfect Then
Of a different time, when we
were of avid eye and smooth of skin,
full of whit, wine and repartee,
and always thought somehow to win
each argument or tumbled fray,
no matter who the foe,
assuredly we’d field the day –
no matter what. Little did we know
as years of doubts unwound,
how the discourse would turn,
shift its footing, hue and sound
as cuttingly we’d soon discern
the dribbled speech, the taunted ear,
the wattle’s crinkled signature,
the dulled dry eye of yellowed years,
avow Time, the unstinting saboteur;
that the awakened dust of monuments
of dreams and dalliance, covers
ruins of pillars and piled pediments,
cedes to Time, the standing conqueror.
Judith Goodman
Protocol
Lest we speak of one another’s ailments
or this one's cancer or that one's dementia,
we dismiss such talk
in deference to our hearts
preferring to sip our soup
our you to deftly open your soda crackers
to let them drop and bob
to the top of your chowder.
In the midday light
we seat ourselves at our familiar table
and engage in careless banter
like lovers enraptured by the sun
unmindful of the risk.
Alice E. Gross, Southbury
Love Test
The flowers he fisted, each a rainbow shade,
Affectionate offering cut from field by knife,
The brilliant-hued, the pastels, nature-made,
He proffered them to her he meant to wife.
She smilingly received his gift. But hold!
What thought provoked that look, that searching glance?
Had he, perhaps, been much too sure, too bold?
The day, the wine, her eyes, a false romance?
She took the fragile beauties and began
To pull the petals off, ne’er breathing scent.
The game some females play to test a man
She then pursued. The blossoms all were rent.
She stared at him and said, “You love me not.”
Illusion gone, he turned and left the spot.
Gwen Gunn, Guilford
Jealousy
She was three years old when her father
in front of her and her mother
threw their pet cat into the fishpond
(Can she swim? Will she drown?)
changing a fresh small yard full of flowers
into a place to be feared she might be next
She saw the cat do nothing to deserve this shock
of wet from which she wildly scrambled
She remembers her mother’s sharp tears
wonders what she had done to deserve this cold
thinks it was simply that she loved the cat
Who would she be punished next for loving?
Regine Heberlein, Bethany
Speaking of Home
You have reason for concern
when you lose words like
copper coins or
breadcrumbs in the woods.
Each one too light for you to know
to pause and search the sodden ground,
until one urgent day you miss
the one.
Raking through a flossy pond
you possess it, almost. Then it’s gone,
wiggled free
like the tadpoles of an afternoon.
That’s your cue to recognize
that you have lost your way:
When your friend on the phone snorts
(of course)
at your fumbling, fondly and yet
as if you betrayed some higher cause.
When her speech has the cadence of
mounds of lime gleaming
in bristly juniper heat.
When you listen to her with owner’s pride
and with the envy of the dispossessed,
and feel the burn of your betrayal
and hers.
Doris Henderson, Danbury
Ruminations Of An Aging Feminist
Maybe you’re thinking about your lost love
or looking at that spot on the wall where you meant
to hang a picture, and suddenly you realize
you forgot to turn the page on your calendar ---
another collection of wildebeests sent to you
by those conservation people.
Whatever happened to all those other calendars?
What year did you look at a new suffragette every month?
What about Georgia O’Keeffe and her suggestive flower petals?
The ancient goddess images, the dancing wiccans,
photos of the ERA march you did in '81?
* * * * *
The lady on the TV screen is grim:
Men are being marginalized in the colleges.
Androphobic women are taking over the system.
Lady professors are forcing students to watch
The Vagina Monologues and other scary things on stage.
Conservatives everywhere are horrified
at what’s happening in higher education.
And it’s all your fault.
Isn’t that refreshing?
Originally published in New Verse News,
an online journal, May 2006
Margaret Iacobellis, Branford
Obituary
The old McFee house,
forty-four Ferry Road,
swallowed by a hurricane,
Monday last.
The home was built in 1894
by Ben McFee, who came
to New Orleans from Jean Lafitte,
mid rumors of pirate ancestors.
Last of the family to live
in the three-story home was
Annamarie McFee, schoolteacher,
who sold to northerners in 1944.
Recent owners, John and Jamie Finnerty,
restored their residence to original beauty
with pediments, porticos, painted quoins,
arches and lintels, elegant cartouches.
The Finnertys, staying in Corpus Christi
with daughter, Jo-Ellen, appreciate
the many condolences received.
McFee house cannot be rebuilt.
Bob Jacob, West Hartford
At Bedside
Hospice
The movement
was so quiet and slow
it took me by surprise.
She was exhausted,
her mouth a shrunken o,
barely breathing,
that when I read
"And did you get what
you wanted from life even so?"
I did not expect
her small fragile hand
to slowly lift and point
at her husband
bowed in prayer.
Stanley Kavan, Milford
I was Young Once
I was young once.
Did I make the most of it,
try to make the pieces fit?
Did I learn to try enough,
set my goals up high enough?
Did I stand tall to reach the crown,
or rise again when I was down?
Was I there when crisis called
and did I give my utmost all?
I was young once.
Did I have that great romance:
storybook circumstance?
Did I teach my children right,
steer clear the dark, embrace the light?
Was I a cause of kindness spurned,
a deed, a favor unreturned?
Did I thank God for gifts acquired:
good health, true love and friendships sired?
Coda..
As seasons fade, we dare to size
the plus and minus of our lives,
of what was good and what was not,
the feats and failures of our lot.
I’d like to think as days burn late
and second chances hesitate,
with heart and soul and mind and tongue
I did my best when I was young.