Animals don’t do heaven,
That’s just us frightened apes,
Building the persistent myth
Of continuation which means nothing
And haunts us all of our beleaguered
Lives.
Animals don’t do heaven
And it suits them,
Honestly breathing in and out
Over their allotted existence.
A philosophy that brooks
No philosophy other than
Being, and they are content.
Animals don’t do heaven,
But we do, in denial, in fear,
In case it’s there, in situ, indecisively.
Look at the T.V., it’s all there,
Our pettiness, our terror of being alone,
Of not being alone. It makes no difference.
Mourning the loss of the intangible,
The animal that died inside of us
And made us this stricken, bone-bag
Riddled with guilt and excuses.
Kevin Cadwallender, Scotland
Sunday 31 March 2013
Sunday 24 March 2013
Elegy for Piper by Taylor Graham
In the last days she was leaving
into the place old dogs go,
when love of master's hand and the daily
joys of walk and dinner bowl
become forgetful;
when without wishing the ears
muffle over master's voice,
and curtains silver-glaze the eyes against
daylight - painless
but wandering from her life
into a new one without us. Solitary
unless every cell
of fading body feels at its walls
the tremor - the soft pad
of others on the far side, their heads
lifted to an unworldly
breeze that already
bears to them her approaching,
her remembered scent.
Taylor Graham, California, USA
Sunday 17 March 2013
the naturalist by Micah Cavaleri
(for Anne Gorrick)
I have finally come around
to write this bookof yellow and red illustrations
of green palms
only centuries late
How have I forgotten what I discovered
on a ship as if I was on a ship I
forgot
although I did not
sit down to write
a cook book. These
illustrations are
illuminations of
a voyage I never
expected to make
until I saw the boards
of the hull. Now
I am lost at sea.
Micah Cavaleri, USA
Sunday 10 March 2013
Die Back by Gram Davies
Over ale, he tells me,
Ash burns wet. Downpour.
Trains in disarray, villages
silenced. The English seem
forever unprepared. To reach
a bus stop needed waders.
A website showed you
how to spot the rot: patches
in bark like porter soaking
shirtsleeves; twigs’
black fingernails bared
above canopies.
We fought flash floods
on roads which closed like zips
behind us, to this inn fire
under these ceiling beams.
Some things appear changeless;
we have no tales of tomorrow.
But in lanes, overhung by ashes’
banana-bunch branches...
a creeping flame. Another ale –
he tells me there were fewer
floods, back in his day.
Gram Davies, England
Sunday 3 March 2013
When the Sun Rises by Doug Draime
I want to hear
the bird’s song, that’s all. The
meadowlark in the dense dark oaks,
or the whippoorwill crooning
to and fro in the sun
of the sycamores. I grow so damn
weary of the human sound,
flashing on with its artificial light
and the rat-tat-tat sound
of the collective Ego,
spinning on its
perpetually bloodied,
nowhere wheels. I want to hear
the blue jay high up
in the maple tree, squawking
a shrill celebration. A thrush singing
to me from the birch tree.
Doug Draime, Oregon, USA
the bird’s song, that’s all. The
meadowlark in the dense dark oaks,
or the whippoorwill crooning
to and fro in the sun
of the sycamores. I grow so damn
weary of the human sound,
flashing on with its artificial light
and the rat-tat-tat sound
of the collective Ego,
spinning on its
perpetually bloodied,
nowhere wheels. I want to hear
the blue jay high up
in the maple tree, squawking
a shrill celebration. A thrush singing
to me from the birch tree.
Doug Draime, Oregon, USA
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