SONGS OF ERETZ FALL '25 "DIGGING"

SONGS OF ERETZ POETRY REVIEW

Theme:  "Digging"

FALL ISSUE 2025

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Unless otherwise indicated, all art is taken from "royalty-free" Internet sources. 

 

Chief Executive Editor

Steven Wittenberg Gordon

 

Co-Editors-in-Chief

Terri L. Cummings

Charles A. Swanson

Lead Editor

Charles A. Swanson

Assistant Editor

Vivian Finley Nida

Guest Art Editor

Terri Lynn Cummings 

 

Frequent Contributors

Terri Lynn Cummings

Steven Wittenberg Gordon

John C. Mannone

Vivian Finley Nida

Howard F. Stein

Charles A. Swanson

Tyson West

 

 

Biographies of our editorial staff & frequent contributors may be found on the "Our Staff" page.

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Letter from the Assistant Editor 

Vivian Finley Nida

 

Featured Frequent Contributors

Howard F. Stein

“Rover’s Lost Bone”

“Child’s Play in the Dirt”

“Archaeological Dig”

 

Tyson West

“Dumpster Dig”

“Burying Slim”

“Love Anthem in a Mixolydian Mode”

 

John C. Mannone

“TORNADO”

“Petoskey Stones”

“When Vesuvius Showered Ash”

Other Frequent Contributors

 

Steven Wittenberg Gordon

“Gift of the Shoshone”

 

Vivian Finley Nida

“Acrocanthosaurus: High-Spined Lizard”

“Digging for ACRO”

 

Charles A. Swanson

“Wild Gatherings: When Is It Wild?”

“Wild Gatherings: A Wheelbarrow and a Shovel”

Terri Lynn Cummings

An Analysis of Seamus Heaney's "Digging" from Death of a Naturalist

 

Guest Poets

Mantz Yorke

“Prospecting for Jet”

 

Kiyoshi Hirawa

“Finders Weepers”

 

John Guzlowski

“Her First Winter in Germany”

 

Michael Victor Bowman

“The Unknown Warrior”

 

Oliver Smith

“Urn Burial, Netheravon”

“Subterraneous Precocious”

 

Mojisola “Mo” Temowo

“How The Earth Gave Me My Birthday Cake”

 

Dana I. Hunter

“Excavating a Relationship”

 

Sean Whalen

“Sky Mine”

 

Merryn Rutledge

“At Nu View Stone, Inc.”

 

Sam Aureli

“The Body Recalls What the Mind Lets Slip”

 

Caroline Misner

“Underground”

 

Nicole Marie Curtis

“EMDR 1: 1995”

 

Guest Poet, General Submission

Carissa Cárdenas

“Kitchen Code”

Frequent Contributor News

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   A Letter from the Assistant Editor

 

Letter from the Assistant Editor

I want to thank all of you who submitted poems for the editorial staff to review. We faced the enviable position of having so many quality submissions that selecting just a few for this quarter’s publication became quite difficult.  This collection includes both Frequent Contributors’ and Guest poets’ poems, written in several forms, including sonnets, a villanelle, a concrete poem, and free verse.  A few of the numerous topics covered deal with war, burial, being trapped underground, life thousands of years ago, childhood, health, an earth oven, historical events, and more, which we are pleased to present for your reading enjoyment.

Vivian Nida

Assistant Editor

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Featured Frequent Contributors

  

Rover’s Lost Bone

narrative verse

Howard F. Stein

To the memory of my father, Charles D. Stein. 

“I had a dog,/ His name was Rover;/ 

And when he died,/ I cried all over.” 

 

 

Rover was destined

And outfitted from birth to dig.

His long muzzle matched

His legs and ambitious paws.

Loving, playful, feisty –

And restless. Comforting

Lap companion, Rover rarely

Stayed for long spells.

 

As a puppy, when taken on walks

For waste disposal and exercise,

He always detoured to test

His paws on grass and ground.

Indoors, rugs and carpets

Served as practice range

And first victim. The only cure

Was to let him loose in the yard.

 

In his early years,

The whirr of his feet

In perfect tandem

Was so rapid, at times

I could not discern

Two distinct paws,

Only a blur of spinning.

His excavations were

Both deep and wide,

Made ample room

For soup bone or shoe

Or well-chewed rag           

He had made his own.

His speed, strength,

And perseverance

Inspired awe for such

Determination and skill –

Not to mention his

Mental map for everywhere

He had planted his treasure.

His recovery and return were

As agile as his determined dredging.

 

When our space did not suffice,

Rover made short work

Of burrowing beneath

My neighbor’s wooden fence,

Clawing his way to the surface,

And rooting around her  

Overgrown back yard

For the perfect spot

To plow the ground

With his nimble paws

Until he had reached

The proper depth, then

Deposited an old beef soup bone

Or an old shoe I had given him,

Which he seized as his own,

Then to fill his hole

With soil and leaves, often

Scanned the scene lest

Anyone had been watching

Where he had deposited his prize,

Then ducked into his tunnel

Under the fence into my yard.

Four or five of these burial pits

Usually sufficed for Rover

To sit back with satisfaction,

And Saw That It Was Good.

By decision or whim,

Only a dog could know,

He surveyed his land –

Then suddenly bolted for

The precise spot

He had hidden his treasure

Months ago. Rover exhumed

His bone, carefully filled in

The hole, then ran off

With his find. Hours

Or days later, he returned

His cherished possession

To its home, removed

Dirt and grass from his secret hole,

Lovingly deposited his treasure,

Dutifully covered it as deftly

As he had dug it, then

Ran back to the house.

 

For years, this was

Rover’s daily round of life

I never understood his purpose,

His logic. My job, I convinced myself,

Was not to understand his way.

Maybe my purpose was to marvel

That such inventiveness was

Possible for a “mere” dog’s brain.

Maybe solo rooting was only

Part of his design – he always

Turned to watch me watch him,

Both of us, characters

In his production.

I don’t remember –

Or want to remember –

When Rover began

To have less bounce,

Whether it was progressive

Or all at once. Either way,

I felt sad. Both he and I

Were losing something vital.

 

By ten, Rover has undeniably

Become slower,

His paws less sure-footed,

Less brisk, in their movement,

His eyes, less keen, his memory,

Less certain of his map

Of our yard – perhaps like me

With Parkinson’s, lapses

In memory and clear thought,

Disconnected islands in a vast sea.

 

Rover still will bolt out of the house

Towards a place he’s certain

He had placed a bone,

But slows down as he moves.

Sometimes his aim, perfect,

Other times, he stops and stands

On hard, clay dirt overrun,

With crabgrass, no give to his paw,

No matter how much he scratches.

He then sits, maybe beside himself,

Perplexed at what went wrong,

Not used to being lost in his own world.

Rover stays for several minutes:

“Has the world gone crazy?”

I can almost hear him think.

Not easily discouraged, he vows

To try again. “How could I

Not recognize my own world?”

His face asks with shudder

As well as disappointment.

How could he have misjudged

What he had gotten right

All these years? What to make of it?

 

Poet’s Notes: When I learned of the “digging” theme for the Fall 2025 issue of Songs of Eretz, my thoughts turned almost immediately to what, months later, I realized to be a cliché in story-writing and story-telling: the sequence of a dog digging in the ground--hollowing out a pit--planting some treasured article--hiding it by covering it with surrounding dirt and debris--returning back to where the dog usually lived--later going and retrieving the article. The cycle repeated itself endlessly.  I realized only far later that what “redeemed” the poem (and the poet) from yawning familiarity was the “twist” I discovered only after writing the poem!

The dog’s name is significant: Rover is the name of my dad’s dog, who somehow lived with his large family in the squalor of the Jewish ghetto in Chicago in the early 1900’s. “Poor as church mice,” he characterized his parents and eight children. How a dog fit into their tenement apartment, I do not know. In a rare glimpse he allowed into the experience of sadness and grief in his emotional life, dad tearfully recounted how much he missed Rover when he died.

The Rover in my poem lived in a far different habitat: house with large yard, separated from other yards by wire or wood fences. The poem turned out to be something of a life-history of a dog from youthful and adult playfulness and abandon, to much later forgetfulness and confusion over where he had planted the various old soup bones, shoes, and rags. A poem about a dog and his endless digging, and his increased difficulty as he aged, in remembering where he buried his treasures, turned out to be a tale in part of my own life-line from relative competence to growing old with Parkinsonian forgetfulness and confusion, as told through, and projected onto, my beloved companion, Rover.  Sometimes, the poet is the last to learn what or who his or her poem is truly about!

 

Editor’s Notes:  A question worth asking about any poem is this, “What does it make me feel?”  Another way of viewing that question is similar, “When I step away from the poem, do I remember it?”  If our emotions are touched, we are more likely to remember.  Howard has done something significant, because I remember Rover’s struggles.  CAS

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Child’s Play in the Dirt

narrative verse 

Howard F. Stein

 

Looking back, I couldn’t

Make it up. But there I was,

At about four, digging in the dirt,

In an unused patch of ground

In the middle of

The business district

Of my factory town.

I didn’t think

Its location odd,

My grandpa’s garden,

Placed just right –

 

Lodged between his three-story

Orange brick apartment building,

With businesses on street level,

An Eagles’ Club lodge wall

On the other side of the lot,

The back wall of a pool hall

To the front, and the alley

At the back–

 

For several years, my playground,

But one with a purpose, to dig,

To plant, to grow, to water.

My farm implements?

A forked claw cultivator,

Two trowels, one wide and one narrow,

Screwdrivers of several sizes,

And a watering can, all of them,

Pockmarked, scratched, rusted,

Bent, dented, wore their years well,

All too large to grasp

With my small hands –

Still, with them I slowly 

Broke up clumps of earth,

Smoothed them out,

Prepared to plant,

Bore holes with screwdrivers,

Dropped in a seed.

Then covered it up, always

Watering before leaving.

 

Did I think of the time I spent

In that vacant lot as child’s play?

Fun, yes, but important work.

Moist, gritty dirt always felt good

In my hands, soil

That was never dirty,

But simply earth, basic,

So soft between my fingers.

 

I felt safe here, with grandpa,

My center of the universe.

Who in the alley or downtown

Would harm me? I simply loved

Being around this sea of dirt,

Imagined how much could

Grow here. My world at peace.

I don’t remember thinking

Of my little parcel of land

As a refuge from any danger –

That there could be earthquakes

Beneath grandpa’s quiet garden.

 

What could this boy of four know

That for several centuries,

Grandpa’s large family of scholars

And rabbis, had been established

In Lithuania, Hebrew

Capital of the world –

Only to be suddenly cast out,

Murdered as aliens;

That his family, lucky

To be alive, fled to what

They called Russian Poland,

Settled for a few decades,

But then were attacked by wave

Upon wave of pogroms,

Angry, brutal Polish and Russian

Peasants who maimed and killed

Every Jew they could.

 

Sometime in the 1880’s,

Grandpa’s family heard of America,

To which four or five brothers

In their early teens first came,

Worked as rag pickers and

Pushcart vendors, slowly

Established themselves,

Then gradually brought over

The rest of the family.

I knew nothing of generations

In Lithuania – of invitation,

Welcome, settlement, belonging,

Thriving, then sudden betrayal,

Slaughter and expulsion.

I knew only strong grandpa now,

And our beloved, life-giving dirt.

 

I loved to grow life for grandpa,

With him, eat some of what

We had grown from my

Uneven rows of leaf lettuce,

Green onions, tomatoes from plants

Held up by sticks I could find

And tied poorly with string.

Grandpa loved his tall zinnias

And low-to-the-ground,

Crawling portulacas.

 

This, a four year-old’s play,

Safe in an empty downtown lot –

But play with purpose,

My grandpa always in mind:

Leaf lettuce and

Little green onions for salad;

Tall zinnias for a vase

On the table,

Tomatoes for summer ecstasy!

 

This determined boy

Knew grandpa was nearby,

So I could dig

With abandon in my haven.

Grandpa’s long and dangerous

Trek from Lithuania to a mill town

In western Pennsylvania,

Found its way to his grandson,

Who sought to bring forth life

In the most unlikely dirt.

 

Poet’s Notes: Upon learning of the SOE issue theme of “digging,” my mind soon drifted to a childhood scene I treasure (and fear that I idealize in my memory).  The poem that grew from that memory draws from my experience as perhaps a 4, 5, and 6 year old boy digging and planting vegetables and flowers in an empty lot in the midst of the business district of the factory town in which I grew up near Pittsburgh, PA. 

        The empty lot was located behind the three-story apartment building my maternal grandfather owned, and in which I lived with my parents, in the apartment across the hall from his. The lot sat likewise behind a pool/billiard hall, which was perpendicular to the apartment building. I treasured my play-time digging in the dirt, play that also had a serious tone, since I planted uneven rows of leaf lettuce, green onions, tomatoes, zinnias, and portulacas. Although I did not have words for it, I knew that life grew from the soil, and that my affectionate grandpa enjoyed his time, both with me and by himself, in this borrowed garden.

        I felt emotionally and physically safe with him and in the lot, though many people walked and drove their cars in the alley behind us. Only much later in life did I come to know his long family history as Lithuanian and Russian Jews who often felt anything but safe. For them, being settled for decades or centuries, and suddenly being brutally attacked, expelled, and fleeing for their lives were the historically shaky ground on which was built my secure playing in the dirt.

Editor’s Notes:  Not all spaces in our large country are ideal for children in their play.  Cluttered and even dangerous settings don’t stop a child when his or her imagination is running wild.  As benign as the activity in this poem seems, there is the real tingling of danger hovering over the inner-city garden.  CAS

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Archaeological Dig

narrative fantasy

Howard F. Stein  

        To the memory of Kenneth Bernard 

 

The oddest archaeological

Expedition I could imagine,

Despite anthropological

Training and supervision

At real dig sites. Long ago

I forfeited my dream

Of becoming a professional.

Too many bills to pay, family

To raise, house mortgage to pay,

Like a long prison sentence.

Good with numbers, I joined

A large accounting firm,

Stayed with them, earned

An adequate living; the people,

Pleasant enough.

 

I embarked one day in my car,

All the equipment necessary

To locate a site, tools large and small.

I had not planned ahead where

I was to drive. I just left one morning

In my car and drove far out

Into the countryside, away

From anyone or anywhere

That had an address I could see.

I drove to a region my little son

Once called “the middle of nowhere,”

Certainly, somewhere to someone,

But to me remote, removed, with

Old wood houses and barns

On immense tracts of land good

Only for running a few cattle,

Each farm invisible to the other,

Often miles apart. I felt

I was where I should be.

 

I turned off the long dirt road

Onto a long dirt driveway,

Timidly pulled up to the house,

Got out of my old car, and

Walked toward the place.

A middle-aged farmer and his wife

Had seen my approach – just about

No one ever came there.

They met me out on the porch.

“Hello, stranger. You lost?”

I said something like “Howdy,

I know I’m unfamiliar face.”

They gave me a once-over,

“You can’t hardly trust anyone

You don’t know these days.

At least you look like us, are

Dressed like us, talk like us,

So you must be from somewhere

Around here.” I said I was from

A city a couple of hundred miles

East of here. I mustered the courage

To try to explain why I was here.

 

“I’m trained to dig deep into the ground

For old history, thousands, even millions

Of years ago.” They said they had seen

Programs like this on TV.  I felt relieved.

“But why are you here?” I explained that

I wanted to spend some time in a place

Far from their home, but on their land,

To dig deep for ancient history. The couple

Looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders.

The farmer looked directly at me,

“Well, you look harmless enough.

OK, go ahead with your project,

But don’t bother us, and we won’t bother you.” 

 

I thanked them for putting up

With this oddity, turned, walked

To my car, and drove off slowly

Across bumpy clods and weeds.

I claim no uncanny sense of location;

Just drove until I knew

I was where I was supposed to be.

Odd how I recognized

That I had arrived precisely

Where I should go – a large clearing

In some ancient woods. 

 

I pitched a simple tent, retrieved

My tools from the trunk,

And began to dig with my shovel.

I knew I was not in search

Of some hidden city, or a

Long-buried trove of gold.

I was clueless as to what

I was looking for.  I only knew

I had to dig, and to dig there,

As though drawn by a magnet.

 

I stayed for several nights,

Brought a spare amount of food,

Gathered small branches

And twigs for a fire,

Enjoyed my solitude

And fresh air carried

In a gentle breeze.

Soon my trench was deep

And wide, almost to my head.

I wondered how much longer

And further down I would

Need to dig, since I did not

Know what I was in search of.

 

One morning as I resumed

My work, a thought, almost

A voice, entered my head,

Repeating itself as if a refrain

From a familiar hymn.

“There is nothing here

To be found. Perhaps

You knew this all along,

But had to keep digging as if

Something of great value

Would finally appear. Yet,

You cannot give up and

Go back home. There is

No one or nowhere

To return to. If you are

Honest with yourself,

You know that as well.

You will not be missed,

Even remembered.”

 

“You must continue

Your excavation,

Persist with certainty

You will discover

Something of great value,

Until you finally give up.

Then you will know at last

Why you came here.”

 

“No one in your home or work

Will send to search for you,

Not even police.

They knew, when you left,

You would not return.

Only you have not realized

This until now. How could

You bear to know they

Had left you behind long ago? 

Somewhere inside, though

You already knew

You came here to die.

You can only reveal

Now to yourself

The pit you have prepared

Is only for you.”

 

“Thousands of years from now,

Archaeologists on an expedition

Will find your fossilized bones

In the strata. They will

Examine your remains,

Write scientific papers,

Place you on display

In a museum or store

Your bones in a drawer

For future use.”

 

“Think of it as perfect symmetry

Within your own scientific project –

Soon, you will deposit yourself

In the grave you have dug,

Look up at the infinite sky,

Bid farewell to your beloved earth,

Slowly drift into your final sleep.

Then, aeons from now,

Archaeologists discover you,

Thrill to have found you,

Claim you as their prize,

Extract your bones from the ground,

Become their scientific subject –

 

The mystery of your

Futile dig so long ago

Finally solved: you were

Meant all along

To dig your own grave,

Your archaeological

Dream, now at last fulfilled –

You will be your own

Archaeological find.”

 

By now, I harkened

To this mysterious presence

As if it had become

My Guardian Angel.

I prepared myself for

My archaeological journey,

Stepped into my pit,

Lay on my back,

Marveled at a daylight sky

I knew held miracles beyond it,

And drifted into sleep.

 

Over the coming months,

Occasional rainstorms

Managed to cover me with

The dirt I had piled

To the sides of my ditch.

Underbrush eventually

Took over, soon surrounded

And enveloped both

Burial chamber and car.

As the year passed, the farm couple

Wondered what had become

Of their drifter. The farmer

Went out, searched haphazardly

Among the thicket of weeds,

Found nothing, eventually

Gave up his search –

As if I had never existed.

 

But I had existed,

Finally found my place,

To dwell here among the strata.

I now belonged to the ages,

Belonged, at last belonged.

 

Poet’s Notes:  Strange . . . where my mind roams when I learn of the issue theme for Songs of Eretz.  True, the image of digging is not unimaginably remote from archaeology and its expeditions. But I am not an archaeologist – maybe an archaeologist of the human mind, from conscious to unconscious. I am trained (among other things) as an anthropologist who took a few courses in archaeology in undergraduate and graduate school. But I never even secretly wished to be a professional archaeologist for my career. 

        This poem comes from darker places, from which ordinary notions of archaeology are only hints at what the metaphor contains.  I wrote the first draft of the poem (or it wrote me), clueless as to where I was headed.  It was as if: first came the action(s); much later emerged what the action was about, meant, signified, pointed to. A supposed creation of a deep pit in search of ancient history turning into digging my own grave. Then I realized (via a personified external Voice of Presence) why.

The poem turned about to be about being wanted or unwanted by other people, about my own identity and meaning, that had been swallowed up by a conventional life. It somehow became a journey toward what theologian Dietrich Bonhöffer called “The beyond in the midst.”  As I wrote the poem, I came to trust where it was taking me: I was its scribe and follower. An initial banal idea led me to Jacob’s wrestling with G-d’s angel, and not letting go until Jacob received a blessing, and with it, his true self (embodied in his new name, Israel).

 

Editor’s Notes:  Reality grounds the fantasy in this poem.  The journey toward discovery is a kind of digging that needs space and length.  By the time I reach the last stanzas of Howard’s poem, I am a believer in his unfolding tale.  CAS

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Dumpster Dig

tanka prose

Tyson West

 

lilac blossoms brown

we patrol old lovers' graves

parry last year's leaves

clean turf and soil from each stone

make sure none have risen

 

Jolene and I meet each year in early June at Fairmont Cemetery. Signs warn all decorations will be disposed of one week after Memorial Day. Once the green steel 40-yard dumpster arrives at the boneyard, we scout graves for potted flowers, pinwheels, and flags. A few days later, I crank the steel lid and climb in. Jolene waits below as I dig into the plastic and fabric fake flowers, teddy bears, beer cans, and dead cut flowers to look for flags and unbroken pinwheels, but most of all potted geraniums, petunias and marigolds. Jolene triages each pot I raise and pours water on those she deems not beyond salvation. We return to our gardens with the rescues where we trowel into the soil to provide these survivors with a temporary reprieve. They will grow and blossom under salvaged pinwheels and flags until they inevitably face fall frost, except the geraniums. She keeps those African immigrants captive in their pots to over winter in her garage. In spring, from years of our efforts, their flowers explode in crimson, coral, and salmon setting forth clouds of spicy scent to face the stiffening sun.

 

cans of beer, pennies,

cut flowers, flags, and pinwheels

grave detritus

still the dead don't dig upward

to fragrance, bright hues, or tears

 

Poet’s Notes:  A friend of mine and I enjoy repurposing found objects. One must be careful not to acquire too many items with potential for a new life, lest one turn into a hoarder. Potted plants, however, are quite safe to repurpose, as their time is so short. At a cemetery where we walk the dog, plants, cut flowers, and other grave decorations are cleaned up after Memorial week and dropped in a large dumpster. My friend and I will dig through the dumpster on our judgement day to decide who will live and who will face the landfill. By repurposing these plants sacrificed on behalf of the dead, the dead should rest happier we gave these innocents a longer life, or in the case of geraniums, immortality.

 

Editor’s Notes:  The tanka prose form is well-worth considering.  Tyson puts the form to good use here, and I find myself intrigued by both the prosaic and poetic sections of his poem.  CAS

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Burying Slim

haibun

Tyson West

 

So many a childhood lesson burned me at the 105-acre farm Father finessed from the Amish widow.

 

boy my age one eye

scarred for life―red hot steel

wood stove prank

 

We lived at that old farmhouse the summer of my 13th year. We kids waxed nostalgic over the double-hole outhouse, while Mom and Dad preferred the indoor plumbing, perhaps a preference from their childhood seating. Father and we kids planted sweet corn between rows of black plastic. Father bountied us to pluck hideous green hornworms from the tomatoes and kill striped potato beetles with leaded gasoline on Q-tips. We played hide and seek at the old barn where I nightmared my first rats.

 

Of course, Father got an unspayed mongrel farm dog, Annie, who would eventually look for love. A Great Dane naturally selected her and the puppies came to light long and gangly. We were all thrilled to greet the newborns and watch them nurse side-by-side. My sister, Ellen, soon chose one as her own, who she named "Slim". As he grew, his short, black-and-white coat and long legs followed her as she ran across open fields.

 

Father would commute to work while we children stayed with Mom for chores and play. One day, my brother and I rose early to start our chores while Ellen slept in. Slim and one of his brothers were missing from the food bowls we laid out. We asked Mom about the two puppies and she told us Father would talk to us after work.

 

After Father arrived and changed into his farm clothes, Mom took Ellen to the kitchen. Our sister had been frantic all day worried where Slim had gone. Father then took Steve and me behind the barn. He told us bluntly he ran over and killed the two puppies. He pointed to two burlap bags and asked how much each of us would bid to bury them. I said, "Five dollars for one grave." Steve bid ten dollars. Father then, almost wistfully, explained at length how the puppies would sleep in the cool shade under his car. He affirmed it was not his fault when he pulled out in a hurry and did not check under the wheels. 

 

flies buzzing―

past the matrix of grassroots

worms soften soil

 

I sweat an hour and a half digging a slit trench three feet deep. I first placed carefully cut sod chunks and then soil on a tarp, as Father had instructed me. With Great Dane paternity and long legs, Father asked me to dig a foot deeper. He later returned and nodded. The two siblings were placed as they had nursed, side-by-side, to decay together.

 

flesh and blood

shrouds and fault dissolve

in the dirt of time

 

I started shoveling soil into the hole, but did not have enough. I learned that day dirt dug from a hole is never enough to fill it. I spent time moving soil in our red wheelbarrow from the corner of a plowed field. Then Father had me dump several pails of water then more soil and tamp down before I could replace the sod. I felt bad Ellen was not allowed to attend the burial. However, I could see Father's reasoning. Always more excitable than the rest of us, I had heard Ellen's violent sobs from the kitchen when Mom talked to her. 

 

never enough tears

to dampen soil filling

a grave

 

Father paid me and asked I not share with Ellen where I buried Slim. Although I clearly see Slim in my mind, his unnamed brother dissolved completely from memory. I did not tell Father I had set dandelions and goldenrod atop the two puppies before shoveling soil over them. If Ellen asked, I could at least share that with her. Although she never spoke to me of Slim's end, whenever she fell into a fit of anger toward Father, even long past her teen years, Ellen always bit him with his role in Slim's death.

 

bacteria, worms

and fungi repurpose flesh

names and guilt

 

Poet’s Notes:  The act of burying or cremating a corpse then placing or scattering ashes lends itself to survivors processing feelings toward that dead friend, enemy, family member, or some combination of such relationships. After I wrote this haibun from the perspective of a reporter, I was surprised to see a pattern in this family of not talking through events or their feelings toward events, but hiring others to avoid admitting mistakes. The father and the daughter in this poem could have ended up closer had they participated in the burial of the puppy and mourned together, the father apologized, and the daughter forgiven him. The gravedigger received the gift of processing and laying his feelings to rest, while the father and the daughter kept their antagonism above ground.

 

Editor’s Notes:  I did not expect to receive two good dog poems from our Frequent Contributors.  As I walked through the farmer’s market in Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) on Saturday, August 30^th, I saw many, many dog owners strolling with their loved and well-behaved dogs on leashes or harnesses.  I was reminded of how attached we are to our canine friends.  They become, for many, part of the family.  CAS

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Love Anthem in a Mixolydian Mode

free verse

Tyson West

 

I could have died from medieval old age

by the time I learned of his existence

yet once his presence burned the alef-bet of his being

into the parchment of my virtual Torah, curiosity tossed

this mission impossible fast onto my already brutal bucket list.

Twenty-Three and Me had been so kind to decree my DNA 99%

northeastern European, almost as pure as Ivory soap, yet 

wrinkled my tissue with a flutter of one percent Ashkenazi genes.

Yes, I knew my hardy kin, big nosed and broad faced,

post-apocalyptic survivors of plagues, Cossacks, and continental arctic blasts

who somehow survived fruit and rye of thin sandy soils, yet

none of them ever whispered of streaks of Semite blood.

Still threads of protein lurking in cells never lie.

As I knelt to kiss the aurora borealis ring of science,

I sensed even AI and Google know what they do not know and

could not tell of my 18th great-great-great Zamani.

Was he a black-haired teenager from a Lithuanian shtetl when he 

and she, my blue-eyed Baltic great-great-great,

slipped off unseen to a jolly corner from the carnival of marketplace 

where two cultures traded rye bread and farm cheese 

for imported steel rakes and buttons 

to negotiate an exchange of their own?

With Aunt Monica and Uncle Joe and my grandparents holding their place in the present in coffins

I can only comb memories of family dinners and my past prodding 

them to push recollection beyond alcoholic fathers who sent their children 

to inhale dust of dismal factories trading soft hands and cheap time

for silver to finance their growlers' fill up with Narragansett lager.

Even as a young man with earnest notebook and pencil

I could never push past the swinging tavern doors of their anger

toward medieval myths and a scintilla of a Semite ancestor.

No deeper and softer would I have to dig

into the sediment of dreamtime, meme magick, and echoes of a passacaglia

in a medieval graveyard.

So the pagan beneath the veneer of catechism

turned to fly firmly the pterodactyl of reincarnation

regressing into past lives where spiders of mind

carefully cross webs of dreams creeping into castles

surrounded by fog cloaked moats.

Had I been 99% Jewish and one percent Slav I would have

guessed a Jewish girl had seduced across tribal lines

and returned to her community to flatter, massage, and marry some

umgelumpent bokhe and claimed the child was his.

She would have woven a life lusty and cooked fat and

shrewd enough to bear her husband many more kinder

to launder away suspicion with the reality of family drama.

I rolled my pagan quartz and agate mibs 

between my fingers as reliable as Saul's Urim and Thummim

but without needing help from the sweet witch at Endor,

and my ancestors rose before me from Sheol.

I laid back on a cold floor for my bones to dig into

the white noise of shapes congealing from the mist of maybe memories

where colors conspire in dyes of half a millennia ago.

I see her long blonde hair sleek in her natural oil and her green eyes smile to the son

of the old man in a yarmulke selling salt and spices and bright trinkets.

Son of an Italian-Jewish merchant from Venice, his

errant ways swiped right on my great-great-great to the 18th 

daughter of a land owner as adventurous as he to 

spoon at the Duke's Court where he sang with a Klezmer backing band

a love song in the mixolydian mode.

They trusted only in ephemeral echoes of their song.

Scales soaring on fiddle, crumhorn, and cornetto 

move her as once I myself lay moved in Rachel Silverstein's fifth floor

walk up by the lowered seventh degree of "Norwegian Wood."

This passion passed down through my parents' polkas 

to my rhythm and blues and rock not just the crescendo of a musical scale

but persistence of melody and mode whose truth we prove not by ancient writings

but through the harmonies of intimacy keeping time to beats of living hearts.

 

Poet’s Notes:  I have been constantly fascinated of a painting of Norman Rockwell on the cover of the October 25, 1959, Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell had taken the overall design based on a 12th Century Dutch family tree to create this whimsical family tree of a boy, imagining his ancestors, including a pirate, cowboy, and civil war soldiers. In truth, unless one's family keeps extensive written records, all we have is our imaginations to dig into to create our own particular myth about our identity and the ancestors who created the identity.

 

Editor’s Notes: One of the pleasures of editing is learning things I don’t know.  Tyson sent me to the Internet to discover facts and impressions regarding the mixolydian mode.  I read definitions, I listened to songs, and I sat down at my own piano to play scales with diminished sevenths.  If I were talented at song writing, I probably would have started composing on the spot.  CAS

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TORNADO

concrete poem

John C. Mannone

 

The sky was scattered to break, clouds jigsawed the dawn. The ground churned up from last

night’s storm—trees uprooted; bark mangled with roof tiles ripped off. Debris strewn for

miles, homes dismembered beyond reassembly, repair; dug-up Despair ran amuck as

ubiquitous as lamentations in starless night. Do such tornadoes materialize from

puzzling politics that allow poor stewardship of our resources at the expense

of our environment? I stare at the fragments of sky, road; wonder how

we’ll put the pieces back together, even if it could be done. Cracks

remain, forever reminding us of our vulnerabilities. Data from

USA Today is clear: tornado frequency is soaring linearly

since 1950. But NOAA scientists say the increase is

just for the lowest level tornado, but those

killer types, F4 and F5, haven’t increased

and maybe decreased in the number

of times they wind-spill anger.

Nevertheless, graves fill up

by our mere presence in

the once-barren land.

It is the meek, who

are poor (but not

in spirit), who’ll

inherit all the

earth, along

with fools

and the

defiant,

buried

in dirt

that’s

dug

up

·

Poet’s Notes: Reflecting on the genesis of this poem, I can reconstruct what most likely led to a shape poem about tornadoes. The weather in April, and early May when this poem was drafted (2024), tends to be dramatic, even in East Tennessee where I live. Oddly enough, it wasn’t a weather report that started it, but rather a scattered jigsaw puzzle on a table entering a library, which was the venue for a writing conference. The pieces were ubiquitous in green (as in grass) and some sky-blue ones too. For a moment, I interpreted the unremarkable scene as chaotic/disorganized. But as soon as the word chaos creeps into my consciousness, my reflex response is chaos theory, the butterfly effect, and tornadoes, in that order. The green reinforced it because the scattered puzzle pieces resembled churned-up turf. The seasonal weather all the more buttressed what I deduced about how the genesis of this poem happened. And there’s more. When I don’t know where to begin a poem, let alone where it’s going, I find I can enter it with clinical descriptions (which later are smoothed into poetry); I trust the process to make connections as I write and bring me to the realization of some literary depth (it often works that way for me; i.e., what the poem really wants to say). I’m a scientist yet I get irritated when the media, the politicians, and their puppets, regurgitate what some believe and speak of it as if some indelible fact; e.g., all bad weather is our fault, our causing climate change. As this poem points out, there may be a whole lot of things that are dismissed or not considered by the uninformed media. Regardless of what some want to embrace as ex cathedra politics about climate change, tornadoes are a force to be seriously reckoned with, and it is the people living in mobile homes, many of whom struggle to live from paycheck to paycheck, who are at high risk. But with an F5, a sturdy home in its path doesn’t have much of a chance either. And there will always be idiots among us that build in harm's way. I wanted the poem to read as a warning, and therefore, I see the word, tornado in all caps, which capitalizes on its formidable nature. Note also the metaphorical usage of Despair. It’s the tornado that digs up Despair, which is always present. The best we can do is bury it. But here, the tornado unearths Despair (I’m personifying it here as Shelly might do by capitalizing the abstraction). From personal experience, the Fear of something brings Despair (in the extreme). So with the frequency of (at least F0 and F1) tornadoes going up, Fear goes up, and often drags Despair with it.

            Relation to the prompt: Tornadoes do a lot of digging: churn the ground, unearthing it, even digging out the houses from their foundations. But a lot of digging was done to extract the data vital to this poem. And all that digging that the news media forgot to do...

 

Editor’s Notes: Some concrete poems sacrifice content for shape, but not this one.  John gives us much to think about.  Perhaps that’s what a tornado does—tears down the landscape, but fills up the heart with emotions.  CAS

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Petoskey Stones

American sonnet

John C. Mannone

 

We dredge the Michigan sand for Petoskey stones,

unearth fossilized pieces of ancient oceans, worn

 

smooth after a millennia of hope, a polished legacy

of life, its origins interred somewhere in the universe.

 

Some say that panspermia—seeds that had sailed

the plasma winds between the stars—landed here.

 

We clasp handfuls of Michigan sand, sift the soft

flour, but can’t find the hard-baked truth of history.

 

My fingers fan open like a starburst, casting sand

to the wind, particles lifting up beyond the clouds.

 

Tonight we sail the black ocean, look for sparks

of meteor light in the predawn waves and wonder

 

about that “bioluminescence” in the sky, about those

Petoskey stones, and probe for primeval secrets of us. 

 

Poet’s Notes: I’m simply fascinated about all things geological and fossiliferous, not to mention astronomical too. Petoskey stones seem to check all the boxes. There’s an implied question in the first 8 unrhymed couplets about origins of the universe, and our planet, but don’t look for an answer, instead, look for an extrapolation of the question about the origin of us, humanity, in the last six couplets. So it’s fair to call the poem an American sonnet with a Petrarchan flavor for the volta and a Shakespearean flavor of couplets.

        Relation to the prompt: Here, the digging has two levels: (1) the digging through the sand to find the Petoskey stones and (2) digging into history, especially geological and cosmological to find both the physical prize and the prize of knowing who we are and where we came from.

 

Editor’s Notes:  So much movement in such a short poem!  From sand to ocean to sky!  From gems to fossils to stars!  From stone hunting to panspermia to bioluminescent!  Wow!  I’m tantalized, inspired, undone!  CAS 

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The Destruction of Pompei and Herculaneum c. 1821 by John Martin

Wikipedia

When Vesuvius Showered Ash

free verse

         John C. Mannone

        Late October, 79 AD, by the Gulf of Naples

 

There were signs

but no one worried

or even knew about

the connection

to earthquakes.

 

When Vesuvius erupted

a cascade of lava crept

while the pyroclastic flows

flew down the basalt wall

of mountain at 453 miles

per hour:

 

the volcano vomited

superheated gases and

tephra 21 miles high,

deep into the stratosphere

at 1.5 million tons per second

 

that melted lead, blasted

searing holes into buildings,

making a jumble of rubble.

Mangled screams fused into

mirrors with last-moment

expressions of surrender.

 

The thermal impact robbed

breaths in fractions of a second.

Organs and blood vaporized

or brains vitrified as lava glass.

The heat shock-induced spasms

froze bodies in contorted

postures, bent over in agony.

 

The fire-mountain buried

Pompeii in 70 feet of ash.

Over 40,000 people lived

there and in her sister city,

Herculaneum. Remains

of only 1500 have been dug out.

 

There are better signs

today, but few worry

about the very active

volcano. Will they

listen and obey the

two-week warning?

 

Poet’s Notes: This didactic poem is a blend of science poetry and literary journalism, book-ended with a hint of social commentary.

        Mount Vesuvius is the most studied volcano in the world; it’s best known for the violent demise of Pompei and Herculaneum in 79 AD.

        A geologically uncommon structure—a volcanic cone inside a caldera originally called Mount Somma, formed 400,000 years ago. Some consider “Vesuvius” formed 17,000 -18,000 years ago, but the Vesuvius-Somma system fits the data to at least 40,000 years ago. The volcano has been called Mount Vesuvius since 79 AD when the cone formed. Its last major eruption was in 1944. The question remains, when will the next eruption happen?

        Since long times are considered, the scale is collapsed with the logarithm function. The reference date is 1944 and time is spoken of as years ago (years before 1944). The log of time is plotted against eruption events. The data fits a sixth-degree polynomial from 1944 to 40,000 years ago. The simplest way to determine when the next two eruptions (from 1944) will occur, is by calculating the average time between eruptions. For this calculation, the data is reliable to about 4,000 years ago. The answer is 57.5 with a standard deviation of 44.4 years between eruptions. (Additional analysis might trim the uncertainty to 20 years.) This means the next eruption might be 1944 + 58 or 2002 but with a large uncertainty. The next eruption might be overdue 1958 – 2046, and the following one, 2060 +/- 44 or 2016 - 2104. This suggests the most critical period would be during the overlap of these two, 2016 and 2046, with the average of 2031 +/- 15 AD. The change in volcanism might suggest a longer time for the next eruption predicted by these data (notice the steepness in Figure 1), but there's no guarantee that the eruption will be weak, just delayed.

        By monitoring its seismic activity, venting, chemical analysis, etc., scientists might be able to alert the public in two weeks, but I fear significant losses among the millions in Naples because of complacency. When the volcano’s instability sparks a red alert, they'll only have 2-3 days at best to evacuate. (At the moment, the authorities will need a full week to evacuate the Napolitains; however, the Italians have an initiative for a more effective evacuation plan by 2030. However, geologists feel the activity is less violent. My analysis supports a decided change in the mechanism that occurred around 150 years ago. Since then (1875), there has been a significant increase in the time between eruptions (but that alone doesn’t suggest the eruptions to be less violent). Regardless of the accuracy of my approach, Vesuvius is a natural hazard to be taken seriously.

        For me, equations are another form of poetry. I pray there will be an increased appreciation for poetry born out of science.

 

Appendix

Figure 1 shows the log function of time when the eruption has occurred versus the event number.

 

Figure 2 plots the years between events versus event number. The green curve shows the periodicity of eruptions (think of it as the fundamental), while the red curve shows a longer period (a harmonic). Notice that the oscillations average around 60 +/- 20 years, a considerably more precise measure than the more-wild fluctuations in the raw data. The value in this graph is the validation that there is an oscillation that’s close to being sinusoidal consistent with an elastic flexing of the subterranean geography.

 

Figure 3 is the inverse of Figure 2 and provides another way to look at the data to gain more insight. Each window represents all the eruptions from 79 – 1944 AD. The first, second and third windows show the number of eruptions with 0-57, 57-114, and 114-171 years between eruptions. The distribution is approximately uniform in the left window, there’s a somewhat more skewed distribution from 79 AD to about the 19th century in the middle window, but the right window is heavily skewed in the other direction with longer times between eruptions, but there are much fewer of them. This suggests there might be at least two different mechanisms of volcanism, consistent with Figure 1 between the Pompei event and the last eruption (1944).

 

 

 

Editor’s Notes:  I will not forget visiting Mount St. Helens, standing at the observation deck, and looking at miles and miles of moonscape—or so it seemed to me—with the volcanic peak looming in the far distance.  Only then did I begin to fathom the strength and power of a volcano.  John’s poem certainly captures that feeling.  CAS   

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Other Frequent Contributors

 

 

Photo taken by Steven Wittenberg Gordon

Artist's Note:  The art is a digital image of some of the Jerusalem artichokes in my backyard in Kansas. The soil is poor, rock-hard solid clay, and that particular area only gets partial sun--which goes to show you that these plucky plants can thrive in the worst conditions. The fence behind them is six feet high, and they tower over it! That particular patch has tripled in size compared to last year. I'm expecting a bumper crop this fall!

 

Gift of the Shoshone

free verse

Steven Wittenberg Gordon

 

Helianthus tuberosus, commonly known as Jerusalem Artichoke,

Also known as Sunchoke, Sunroot, and Earth Apple,

Hails not from Jerusalem but from Central North America,

Nor is it an artichoke but rather a species of perennial sunflower.

It was likely brought to France by Samuel de Champlain

And eventually to Italy, where it became known as “Girasole,” Italian for “sunflower,”

Which sounds a little bit like “Jerusalem” some people say.

However, the Europeans first referred to this wonderful plant as “Topinambur”

After the Tupinamba tribe in Brazil, from where it was mistakenly thought to derive.

It prefers full sun and well-drained soil but is easy to grow in almost any conditions.

Spreading by tubers or rhizomes and by the seeds of its pretty yellow flowers,

It can rapidly become invasive unless all tubers are diligently harvested—

Left to its own devices, a small piece of tuber will grow into a ten-foot plant!

 

The Shoshone, who once lived from the western Great Basin to the Great Plains,

Were aware of the ease with which the plant could be cultivated.

Although the Shoshone name for the sunchoke is lost to history,

The plant was highly valued by the tribe as a food source,

So much so that a famous Shoshone, Sacagawea, planted them in her travels

With Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as they mapped the western frontier,

And it is well that she did, for they might have starved upon their return journey

Had not the sunchokes, which by that time had matured, provided sustenance.

 

I grow them on my little plot in Kansas, where they thrive and have spread,

Harvesting their knobby nuggets and enjoying their nutty potato-like flavor when fresh

And savoring their delightful snap later in the winter as pickles.

They keep well throughout the winter if left undisturbed in the ground,

And I am able to dig them up as long as the earth has not frozen solid

To further enjoy them well into February as home fries, boiled and mashed, or roasted,

But I always leave about one quarter of the potential harvest in the soil,

Ensuring they will return in spring, soaking up the Kansas rain and sunshine.

I relish watching the renewed plants grow from little shoots

To towering leafy stalks, eventually bursting with sun-colored flowers,

All the while knowing what golden yield is forming beneath the earth.

 

Poet’s Notes:  If you can do it to a potato, you can do it to a Jerusalem artichoke. As my storybook hero, Samwise Gamgee, recommends, "Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew." Jerusalem artichokes also make excellent home fries and chips and surprisingly good pickles!

        My poem is free verse, almost narrative. It progresses from a kind of documentary in the first stanza to an historical anecdote in the second to a personal story in the third. It is this progression that makes the piece a poem rather than a book report.

 

Editor’s Notes:  I, too, am a fan of Jerusalem artichokes.  I’m also a fan of plant history.  I like the combination of elements in Steve’s poem—of origins, of facts, of food ways.  I wish I had some tubers to dig right now.  CAS

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Photo taken by and courtesy of Vivian Nida.

 

Acrocanthosaurus: High-Spined Lizard

sonnet

Vivian Finley Nida

 

When fossils are your passion, you must dig,

just like rock hounds—Sid Love and Cephis Hall—

in secret.  Hall found a leg bone, black. Big 

enough to make a dinosaur stand tall.

From waste pit near a river, Mountain Fork,

the two men dug up bones and skull, effects

of hundred million year old dinosaur,

one older than Tyrannosaurus Rex

and bigger.  This giant, forty feet long,

stood twenty feet, weighed fourteen thousand pounds.

Arms, muscled, ended with three sharp claws, strong.

With teeth like daggers, this champion ruled grounds,

but instantly died with nowhere to go

when struck down by a volcanic mud flow.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Photo courtesy of Vivian Nida who is standing by the Acrocanthosaurus for a sense of scale.

Digging for ACRO 

sonnet

Vivian Finley Nida

 

If fossils thrill you, I suggest you dig,

and if by chance, a jet black bone juts from

the river bank, don’t wait for a drilling rig.

Dredge with your hands and lift huge bone to sun.

It’s felt no warmth in a hundred million years.                                 

The voice of reason says more bones are here.

The whack of shovel digging drums your ears.                     

At twelve feet, arm bones with three claws appear.

Both curved and sharp, claws grasped and captured prey.

Nearby lie shoulder blades, a wound on one,

and broken ribs, most likely from foul play.

You take a risk—dig horizontal run,

crawl in. Won’t find it. Never will, said everyone.                  

Your fingers grip the skull.  You come undone.

 

*Acrocanthosaurus, State Dinosaur of Oklahoma

 

Poet’s Notes: When I visit my sister in Idabel, OK, in McCurtain County, we go to the Museum of the Red River to see the faithful copy of Acrocanthosaurus, State Dinosaur of Oklahoma since 2006.  It is one of the most renowned dinosaur finds ever, and it took place in McCurtain County. The idea for these poems was the dig conducted by Cephis Hall and Sid Love.  They dug for the dinosaur from 1983 to 1986.  The site of the dig was on Weyerhaeuser Corporation’s property, so Hall and Love met with the timberland manager in the presence of the director of the Museum of the Red River.  At that meeting, Hall and Love received permission to dig on the property and to keep whatever they found.  When the corporation executives discovered the value of the find—especially the thousand pound skull that was four feet, seven inches long and had all its teeth—they challenged the ownership but were unsuccessful because Hall and Love had a notarized document witnessed by the museum director from their meeting with the manager.

            Hall and Love did not have the resources to restore the prized dinosaur that had been buried in Oklahoma for at least a hundred million years.  They sold the bones to Allan Graffham in Ardmore, Oklahoma, who paid one million dollars to have it restored by the staff at Black Hills Institute in South Dakota.  They spent seven years and thousands of hours cleaning the bones and restoring the skeleton.  Then it was bought for three million dollars by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh where it is currently on display.

            Personal interest in this story began in the 80’s when my sister, our children, and I drove through Hochatown, OK, and saw a hand-lettered sign, “Rock Shop.” The children had been collecting quartz rocks and wanted to go, so we did.  The owner of the shop was Cephis Hall.  He had tables set up with rocks and fossils to view, and he spent time talking to us about them.  After that, we went back several times. What he and Sid Love accomplished is amazing.

            To learn more, read The Bone War of McCurtain County: A True Tale of Two Men’s Quest for Treasure, Truth, and Justice by Russell Ferrell.

 

Editor’s Notes:  Subjects for poems are inexhaustible.  Almost as inexhaustible are ways of viewing the same subject.  I like that Vivian has given us two sonnets—two investigations—of the same dinosaur find.  I’ll bet she has even more ways of digging into this massive discovery!  CAS

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Wild Gatherings:  When Is It Wild?

free verse

Charles A. Swanson

 

As I go a-digging-up (valderi, valdera!),

I wonder what is wild.

Was it here before Europeans?  Did

Indians trade it up and down

 

two continents?  I suppose I’m not

a purist.  When I find

asparagus growing wild, then I

think of it as wild, not feral.

 

One writer described it thus,

feral, an escapee

from domestication.  Like

a free-range, untamed,

 

cat.  I add the cat.  That’s

my deep thinking—

feral, something that hangs

around outbuildings,

 

something I can’t quite touch. 

Not here, in these heavy

clay soils, but sandy soils

King & Queen, Virginia,

 

almost anywhere, the spears

shoot up, along the fields,

in huge clumps around electric

poles, not just gardens.

 

No one need dig a trench,

fill it with sand, compost,

plant and nurture and hope.

No, just go out there,

 

and dig the wild things up,

bring the feral creatures

back home again, set them out,

tame them with a little love.

 

Poet’s Notes:  I like poem series, and I think in that direction most often when I write poetry.  The concept of gathering wild plants for food seemed a good series for a few poems, but the scope expanded.  Soon I embraced hunting for meat as a type of wild gathering, and not long after that the history of gatherings.  The concept remains an exploratory one for me, and thus I eventually asked the question, “What is wild?”  We live in a world of food that has wild roots, but much of that food world has undergone domestication.  When plants seed themselves, are they then domesticated or wild?  A vegetable or a weed?  The concept of wild gatherings has become a type of brain food, not just a table food.  Ideas feed me, too.

 

Editor’s Notes: This poem has vivid images and makes me smile from start to finish.  The first line’s reference to “The Happy Wanderer” (valderi, valdera!) starts me humming, glad to be searching for asparagus.  This delicious, wild vegetable grows along a fence row on our family farm.  We look forward to gathering it every year.  VN 

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Catails in a drainage ditch in Oklahoma City.

Photo by Vivian Nida and Terri Cummings, 9/11/2025.

Wild Gatherings: A Wheelbarrow and a Shovel

free verse

Charles A. Swanson

 

We have neighbors both present

and gone.  The gone intrigue me,

their homesites covered in pines,

plantations of Continental Can and Camp.

 

The house sites are old yard circles

in the crops of trees, and the farm lanes

still run, now through rows of pines

rather than fields of grain or pastures.

 

This day, I push my wheelbarrow

up our half-mile lane, up to the mailbox,

cross the asphalt, and trek one dark

but serviceable passage back and back.

 

Like any unknown forest, a mystery

breathes around me, a palpitation

of danger, a secrecy that consorts

with brown needles matting the aisles.

 

Only a mile from home, or less,

I feel miles away, the only one

living in a once-tended world,

a world left to grow untouched.

 

Going for cattails, I have seen

them protruding from the cellar,

only a hole that once knew

a house above it, but only the hole

 

and the faint smudge of the yard

remain.  That hole, now a pond

of brooding water, hosts the cattails

I had found on an earlier trip.

 

I believe and hope them edible,

based on Angier’s handy book.

My shovel bounces, clangs,

metal spade on metal concave.

 

I wheel the dinged-up wheelbarrow

closer, down the one brown

needle-strewn strip of two lane

track.  I dream of cattails,

 

roots boiled or baked, shoots

like asparagus, flower spikes

like summer corn—or thus boasts

Bradford Angier.  I doubt,

 

doubt like any toddler facing

a spoon of new, untasted stuff.

Will I spit it out—even if I

cook it just right?  The cattails,

 

the pines, the abandoned way

of life, it is all a bit too much.

I dig out muddy roots, not

of cattails but of daffodils.

 

These survive the new order,

the carnage, the pine plantation world.

I wheel them home, yellow trumpets.

Daffodils instead of food.  Safe flowers.

 

Poet’s Notes:  Vivian Nida suggested I set this poem in the present tense, and she was wise to offer that advice.  Therefore, I’ve taken poetic license and told this tale of yesteryear as if it were today.

        When I purchased Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, I became engrossed with the possibilities.  Cattails were one of the many plants that Bradford Angier described, and I had no idea I could eat them.  I tried some of the other plants he presented in such glorious and sumptuous detail, but I never got up the nerve to dig cattail roots, or to harvest the shoots or flowers.

And, by the way, unless anyone reading my poem should get the wrong idea, daffodils are not edible.  Daffodils are “safe” because they are known, because we grow them for beauty, and not because we can eat them.  I wouldn’t want to poison anyone.

 

Editor’s Notes: The friendly voice in this poem welcomes readers to walk alongside the wheelbarrow, step into a forest and onto a carpet of pine needles, breathe the crisp air, and, even though no shoreline is nearby, discover that this trek is to dig cattail roots—to eat!  Shortly after reading this poem, I drove through a neighborhood that has a drainage ditch beside the road.  The ditch in front of one house is filled with cattails.  If I hadn't read this poem, I would have thought this was landscaping, perhaps for privacy, but now I wonder if the people who live here are also fans of Bradford Angier and have planted the cattails to harvest and cook!  VN

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

An Analysis of Seamus Heaney's

"Digging" from Death of a Naturalist

prose poem

Terri L. Cummings

 

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. 

– Will Rogers

 

Whether dug with a spade or a pen, the connection forced a metaphor to raise its hand. In his poem, “Digging,” Seamus Heaney dug until he found what he sought—a reconciliation of professions of his father’s and grandfather’s potato drills dug ‘the old Irish way.’

        Heaney lamented, “…I’ve no spade to follow men like them” -- a metaphorical hole as referenced by Will Rogers. Yet Heaney found his spade, “the squat pen,” and dug “through living roots” awakened in his head. His words climbed from the well of quandary to the advantage of self-confidence. A fine lesson for all.

 

Poet’s Notes: Recently returned from Ireland, I brought home a copy of Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist. His poem, “Digging,” seemed the logical one to use as the basis for my prose poem. 

Over the years, Heaney explored the human condition, often drawing on themes rooted in his Irish heritage, rural childhood, and the political and social struggles of his time. He left readers with a stronger bond to poetry through his use of connections among land, memory, identity, history, and mythology, providing rich contexts for his work.

 

Editor’s Notes: Terri’s poem is partial proof that Heaney’s poem, “Digging,” was in the minds of many poets who submitted for this theme.  Having read many fine submissions, I saw repeated references to Heaney, all proof that “Digging” has rooted itself into the hearts and consciouses of many people.  Heaney’s poem became almost an archetype for this issue.  CAS

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Guest Poets

Prospecting for Jet

free verse

Mantz Yorke

 

Above a diminuendo of tumbled rock,

specks of black in the strata of the cliff.

Hints of a promising vein: good enough,

and the artisans in Whitby will pay him

 

sixty pounds a pound. Their jewellery –

pendants, earrings, necklaces

and brooches – is appreciated by lovers

of Victoriana and, no doubt, by Goths.        

 

He digs into the face. Suddenly, the rattle:

he’d half-expected it, for grassy earth

lies on the shore, fresh-fallen

from the clifftop’s sodden ground.

 

Pressed tightly against the face,

He’s glad for his hard hat: stones

hit a slight ledge above his head

and, bar a couple of raps, bounce past.

 

The small avalanche stops. Silence,

save for the shushing sea. He resumes,

deaf to the clink of hammer

on chisel, but he’s listening, listening …

 

Poet’s Notes:  Queen Victoria, in mourning for the death of her husband, led the fashion for jewellery crafted from black jet. The Yorkshire coast around Whitby is a source of jet: shops in the town sell various artifacts. Collecting the jet from deposits in the cliffs is hazardous since the cliffs are susceptible to collapse. I watched a man digging into the cliff to extract some jet the last time I visited the coast.

The Goth subculture in the UK favours black clothing, makeup and hair. In 2007 Sophie Lancaster, a young woman dressed as a Goth, was murdered in a park in Lancashire by a gang of teenage boys. Her boyfriend was severely injured in the same attack on two people who looked ‘different.’

 

Editor’s Notes:  In the first line, “diminuendo,” conveys the diminishing sound of tumbling rocks.  This signals that sound will be of utmost importance in the poem. Specific images of artisan creations follow and explain why the person chips away on the face of the cliff, a dangerous job.  Then, by juxtaposing “deaf” and “listening, listening…” the poet creates a haunting, masterful ending.  I thoroughly enjoyed my safe view of this digger’s work.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Mantz Yorke is a former science teacher and researcher living in Manchester, England. His poems have been published internationally. His collections Voyager and Dark Matter are published by Dempsey & Windle, and No Quarter by erbacce Press.

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Finders Weepers

free verse

Kiyoshi Hirawa

 

When you dig for the missing,

part of you prays for failure,

because success means 

digging a second grave,

grieving the last bone of hope.

 

People think you just thunk a spade 

into a mound of vegetation made extra thick

and extra green by decomposition,

oversized leaves flattened by the paws

of a whimpering cadaver dog.

That’s not how it works. 

This is excavating,

and how you care for the soil 

is the difference 

between digging 

and digging up.

Sifting, not scooping.

Filtering, not flinging.

Turning, not tossing.

You’re not ordering the soil to remove itself,

but asking it to remember, 

requesting it to return what was lost.

 

No. Who was lost.

The greatest danger 

isn’t a cave-in or a collapse,

or even contamination,

but intellectualization, 

layered sediment 

smothering sentiment.

 

Which is why geologists dig,

and archaeologists dig up,

but forensic anthropologists dig in,

dig clear, dig free,

dissecting dirt and detritus 

for any trace or token,

some fragment or fiber 

or fingerprint

that might bury another.

 

Editor’s Notes:  I like the personification of soil, the differentiation of ways to dig, and the compassion shown by forensic anthropologists as they “dig in, dig clear, dig free” to discover who was lost in all kinds of disasters, like the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the flash flood that struck Camp Mystic for girls in Hunt, Texas.  This is the poem I chose as my editor’s choice.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Kiyoshi Hirawa is a poet, writer, and former police officer who was wrongfully terminated after reporting sexual misconduct and rape committed by fellow police officers. Hirawa’s work focuses on resiliency, hope, and providing a voice for the unheard, ignored, and overlooked.

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Her First Winter in Germany

American sonnet

John Guzlowski

 

My mother never thought she’d survive

that first winter in the slave labor camps.

She had no coat, no hat, no gloves,

just what she was wearing when the Germans

came to her home and killed my grandma

and took my mother to the slave labor camps.

 

A German guard saved her life there.

He saw her struggling with her hands

to dig beets out of the frozen earth,

and he asked her if she could milk a cow.

 

She said, “Yes,” and he took her to the barn

where the cows were kept and raped her.

Later, the cows kept her from freezing

and gave my mother warm milk to drink.

 

Poet’s Notes:  My mother was a Polish Catholic who was taken to Germany after seeing her sister, her sister’s baby, and her mother killed by German soldiers.  My mom then spent 3 years as a slave laborer in Germany during World War II.

 

Editor’s Notes:  In only fourteen lines, this sonnet exposes the atrocities of WWII.  The specific images—no coat, no hat, frozen earth, digging beets, warm milk, and more—give it universal appeal.  VN

 

About the Poet:  John Guzlowski’s poems about his parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany appear in his award-winning Echoes of Tattered Tongues.  His most recent books of poems are Mad Monk Ikkyu, True Confessions, and Small Talk: Writing about God and Writing and Me.  His novels include Retreat: A Love Story and the Hank and Marvin mysteries, reviewed in the New York Times.  He is also a columnist for the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish newspaper in America. His most recent book is a collection of these columns called Who I Am: Lives Told in Kitchen Polish.

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The Unknown Warrior

free verse

Michael Victor Bowman

When four years of war had ended
four parties of men visited the four
great battlefields with instructions
to return with the body of
"an unknown British soldier"
as so many of the makeshift
grave markers were inscribed.

Each soldier began as one of the many
who marched past their own graves
being dug in preparation
for great battles like the Somme;
men whose laughter and song died, first,
on their lips, at the sight of those
temporarily empty pits; men whose
mortal bodies soon followed their
cheerfulness into silence.

Four bodies now lay in a simple metal shed
sanctified as a chapel for the purpose.
Mere bones, one officer said, gathered up
in sacks, their anonymity carefully protected.
Only one among them was selected: at midnight
the Brigadier General himself placed the candidate
in a plain pinewood coffin and nailed the lid shut.

Across the Channel to Dover, then by train
to Victoria station, but that journey of
an hour and a half took almost a day.
Every station platform and railway siding,
every nearby street and garden, was crowded
with silent, motionless people, waiting
and watching and silently mourning,
as the anonymous soldier
was slowly carried away.

As night fell and the train rolled on
the light from the carriage windows
was answered by the glow from a million
open doors, like candles for the million
lost souls the single occupant
of that casket represented.

Next day, in the streets of London,
as the eleventh day dawned, tens of thousands
lined the streets, heads bowed,
as the casket approached the Abbey
to take its place among the tombs of kings,
most honoured among the honoured dead.

The Great Silence began as Big Ben struck
eleven and for two minutes trains stopped,
ships drifted and no phone calls were made.
Even a plane cut its engine and slowly
descended, just as the casket descended
and was covered with French soil, sealed
forever beneath black Belgian marble,
and once a year is adorned with red poppies
in token of the eternal memory.

Unknown, unranked, unrewarded. The universal son,
brother or lover; the missing father, uncle
or friend. The only soldier ever repatriated.
Done so for the sake of those who had lost
their own flesh and blood, to gift them the sense
that their flesh and blood had finally been returned.

Poet’s Notes: The concept of the unknown warrior was to provide every grieving family, whose loved one's remains had been lost in battle, with a grave at which to mourn. His anonymity served to inspire the idea, however unlikely, that he might even be that loved one. This is reflected in the choice of the word 'warrior' which is as it is inscribed on the tomb: despite being commonly referred to as 'soldier', warrior was chosen so that he might be a member of any branch of the armed forces: soldier, sailor or airman.
        The original idea is attributed to David Railton, a chaplain in the British Army, who first conceived of it in 1918. On the 7th of November, 1920, working parties were sent to the sites of the battles of Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres. The four candidates were taken to St Pol, where Brigadier General Louis Wyatt, assisted by one other officer (who is likely the source of the "mere bones" quote) selected a body. At each stage, no one person knew all the details of the process so as to safeguard the anonymity of the individual. Even the remaining three bodies were disposed of covertly: they were placed in new graves in a distant location where it was known that grave parties were searching and, as planned, the grave parties "discovered" these three graves and recovered the bodies, never knowing the significance of their find.
        The Unknown Warrior was the only soldier repatriated from the battlefields of France. He was interred at Westminster Abbey at the stroke of 11 on the 11th of November,1920. At the same time, the French interred an anonymous French soldier at the Arc de Triomphe, and the United States would follow suit the next year.
        The author has not seen any definitive evidence in this regard but, based on his own research, speculates that the industrial world was never as still as it was during that first two minutes of silence, centred on London and Paris in 1920, until the pandemic of 2020 and the first lockdowns, a century later.

 

Editor’s Notes: I appreciate the respect shown by the solemn tone and slow pace of this poem, achieved in part by long sentences, repeated words, and continuous sounds that last as long as breath allows, like r and s.  I did not know the history of the Unknown Soldier, and this poem presents it with due respect.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Michael Victor Bowman is a biology graduate, career factotum and general automath who is now working on a PhD in truth and lies in the AI era. He is the author of a handful of short stories and novellas, and has been published in journals as diverse as Star*Line to the Gothic Nature Journal, but he is still new to SpecPo. If you like his work, please consider leaving a comment at www.michaelvictorbowman.com because, as Charles Buxton said, silence is the severest criticism. 

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Shards of a funeral urn likely broken by a badger (Photo: Wiltshire 

Council CMAS)

Urn Burial, Netheravon

villanelle

Oliver Smith

Memory remains, discarded hearts and bones
in a red-clay pot: cupped cremation shards
beneath; root-tangled, time lost. In the stones,

barrow bound at the world’s edge, left alone
three thousand years engraved. This past
memory: remains discarded. Hearts and bones

spine, skull, a stone knife carried far from home
left by travellers set upon some dark path
beneath; root-tangled time lost in the stones;

in the woods where wild bees filled honeycomb;
where burned a hundred hearths turned charred
memory: remains discarded: hearts and bones

interred; where sickles rose to reap corn grown
golden, grown summer tall, grown from good seed cast
beneath root. Tangled time lost in the stones

of rolling hills and coombs, again alone
our old futures fade too fast and our last
memory remains discarded; hearts and bones
beneath root-tangled time, lost in the stones.

 

Poet’s Notes:  The "world's edge" in the poem refers to the British Isles, which for ancient Europe was just that – only endless ocean lay beyond. This land has been farmed for thousands of years, and the poem connects this history and prehistory with themes of harvest and death, hearth and home, growth and decay, and the layers of history buried beneath the land’s surface.
        Netheravon, near Stonehenge in Wiltshire, is part of a much larger sacred landscape associated with the transition between life and death, and with remembering the ancestors. A burial was discovered there when badgers partially unearthed the deposit while building a set burrowed into a barrow. The identity of the person interred at the site is lost; only a few clues remain to their identity: shards from a pottery cremation urn, bone and antler tools, a copper chisel with a decorated bone handle, an archer’s wrist guard, and stone tools used for straightening arrow shafts.
        In three or four thousand years, how much will we inhabitants of the 21st century leave behind? These identities are lost in the soil, in the stratigraphy, down in the underworld between the tree roots and worms with Persephone and Hades. Occasionally, the gates of the underworld open and release a few of its prisoners and then we catch a fleeting glimpse of the ancestors' shades.

 

Editor’s Notes:  This exceptional villanelle shows the red-clay pot, shards, stones, bones, knife, and land that were all part of life three thousand years ago.  The rhythm, rhyme and repeated lines, which never sound forced, are handled skillfully and offer additional meaning each time they occur.  VN

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 Subterraneous Precocious

free heptameter

Oliver Smith

At the age of eight, beneath the wax-caps, in hollow groves
I admired the moles industry, so resolved to dig a hole
deep enough to reach Australia, which, I had been told
lay directly beneath my feet. I cared not for shallow
empires of municipal road works; jackhammers and diggers
only scratching the molten mantle’s rock-scummed surface. I wished
to tunnel to Pellucidar, the hollow earth, the land below!

Like Margaret Lawn, Otto Lidenbrock, and Abner Perry
I wanted to wander mushroom meadows and toadstool forests
where sunken Atlantis wallowed in the sediment of ages
and creatures of the subterranean kingdom roamed free.
With my father’s spade in the yard, I began my journey
down through loam, sand, subsoil clays, mud, worms, and gravel. I trotted
with a wheelbarrow, forth and hither to the garden end

and deposited a spoil heap, which I calculated.
assuming a three-foot bore, as I reached the antipodes would
bury the whole village a thousand feet deep beneath a pile
of diggings as tall as a mountain. At teatime, I returned
to the house, tired, hungry, and muddy. Having dug three feet
into the ground, I’d found two devil’s toenails, some old dog bones
and a belemnite embedded in lower Jurassic limestone.

 

Poet’s Notes:  A small digging project inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core, John Wyndham's The Secret People, and Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

 

Editor’s Notes: I like the enchanting world of the eight-year-old mind and the easy shift to reality with spade, wheelbarrow, and the day’s treasures—devil’s toenails and dog bones.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Oliver Smith is a visual artist and writer from Cheltenham, UK.  He is inspired by Tristan Tzara, J G Ballard, and Max Ernst; by the poetry of chance encounters, by frenzied rocks towering above the silent swamp; by unlikely collisions between place and myth and memory.
        His poetry has been published in Abyss & Apex; Ink, Sweat, and Tears; Strange Horizons; and Sylvia Magazine and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
        In 2020, he was awarded a PhD in Literary and Critical Studies by the University of Gloucestershire.  For more information see his website: https://oliversimonsmithwriter.wordpress.com

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How The Earth Gave Me My Birthday Cake

free verse

Mojisola “Mo” Temowo

 

It was my birthday last week.

My sister — a new and struggling baker —

wanted to bake a cake for me.

 

The gas had run out the day before,

and, as always, the power was gone.

 

Before she died,

our mom told us how they baked in the old days —

 

sand in a pot,

paper laid over it,

fresh batter in a pan,

baked slowly over coals.

 

My sister decided to try it —

to bake my cake in, if you ask me,

the cool way.

 

We went outside with our spades,

to dig in the earth for sand.

 

We dug and we talked,

remembering past birthdays,

how spectacular the cakes had been;

one as brown as the earth we now dug

 

We didn’t notice the dirt

working its way under our fingernails —

only that the earth was giving us what we needed,

and that our hands,

for just that moment,

belonged to a tradition

older than both of us.

 

Poet’s Notes:  When I saw the theme ‘Digging’ on the Songs of Eretz Poetry Review website, of course my first thought was ‘Birthday Cake!’ -- kidding! -- no, it was not. My first and original thought was of the earth, naturally. And I was so determined to stay rooted (pun intended) in the ‘earth’ theme, that I was a bit surprised myself when I ended up linking it with my birthday cake. But that’s writing 101; you may not necessarily end up where you began. As poets, writers, I’m sure we all know how that goes. This is all to say the event I described in my poem was not a real one, but the act of baking a cake using sand and coals is definitely real.

 

Editor’s Notes: The title and the earthen baking are fascinating, but witnessing the bond between siblings is the sweetest part.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Mojisola ‘Mo’ Temowo is a 25-year old Nigerian poet with absolutely no educational degree whatsoever in writing. She believes her passion and enthusiasm for every form of writing, poetry, short stories, novel, articles and screenplay, more than make up for it though. Her work is now being featured in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Excavating a Relationship

free verse

Dana I. Hunter

 

As I try to find a reason to stay.

 

I’ve been searching the layers

of you. So deep, there is no surface,

dead cell by dead cell. Pure

determination and desperation.

 

I want something that brings

me back to you. So strong it

places you forefront in my

frontal lobe and buries you there.

 

I catch the scent of your neck,

your crooked smile, the ever-annoying

simple, ‘Hello.’ Followed by silence

and a blank stare.

 

I want the essence of you again.

So, I can put it into my pocket 

to hide from others, saying

‘This is mine.’

 

I don’t see you when I see you.

Instead, my eyes bore their way past

your grey curls and depressing references

while you strain to stop weeping.

 

Poet’s Notes:  This poem was a deliberate examination of a possible relationship I was considering embarking upon. What would our relationship be like years from now if I were to move forward with that person? The internal dissection of ‘us,’ and its result, the poem, are fictional. Although I can imagine many couples married or entwined have asked themselves, ‘What keeps me in this relationship?’ 

 

Editor’s Notes: In the first four-line stanza, five words begin with the letter “d,” a hard sound, like the thrust of digging.  This sets the stage for the speaker’s struggle.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Dana I. Hunter (she/her), a top poet in the NAMI NJ: Dara Axelrod Expressive Arts Poetry Contest, has been featured in Heather Stivison's Ekphrasis! at Pleiades Gallery in NYC; published in The Decolonial Passage Literary Magazine, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, table/FEAST Literary Magazine and Open Minds Quarterly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Sky Mine

quatrains in ABCB rhyme

Sean Whalen

 

I thrust my shovel into the air

scoop away the blue and clouds

embrace the halo of circling birds

the feathers they offer as a shroud.

 

I’m surprised to find the going hard

resistance blunts the shovel’s edge

a dull ache settles in brain and arms

but I persist to carve a ledge

 

to provide a foothold and a grip

that I may use to launch a way

into spaces I do not know

to bury the night and unearth day.

 

I’ve been unable to find below

what I hope to find above

I’m rich in diamonds, coal, and worms

but poor as Midas in peace and love.

 

Poet’s Notes:  I spend quite a bit of time walking, looking at the ground, searching for things (artifacts, antlers, cool stones, and the like). When I look up the sky seems bare and easy to navigate. The birds certainly have no trouble passing through. But I understand that is a mirage to the earthbound. This poem is a reflection on forging a different route along a deceptively difficult path to mine a more substantial treasure.

Editor’s Notes:  Charles and I like the reversal in this poem—digging into the sky instead of the earth.  Favorite images include the circling birds forming a halo and their feathers creating a shroud.  I also like ending with the mythological allusion to Midas.  VN

About the Poet:  Sean Whalen is a retired health and safety professional, current volunteer fire chief, and a graduate of the Iowa State University Creative Writing program. He lives in Boone County, Iowa, near where the Laurentide Ice Sheet ground to a halt millennia ago, leaving mounds of glacial till in the form of moraines and kames, and providing a rolling base for fertile prairie in which to dig, albeit with the striking of occasional granite erratics. He has been fortunate to have his poems published in numerous journals.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

At Nu View Stone, Inc.

free verse

Merryn Rutledge

 

Pedro invites me into his realm—

granite wrested from middle earth.

 

Polished slabs stand in upright rows like books

braced by iron bookends, for browsing.

 

Scanning the shelves, Pedro exclaims, Nature! Nature!

as though trying to sum up God’s universal library.

 

Stories of plates shifting, layers pressing, glaciers raking.

Even now, the stone only seeming to stay still.

 

See this piece? A map where a green river 

wanders through alabaster plains.

 

Conceiver of cloisonné inlaid this giant jewel with mica.

A master mosaicist created that panel of peach and gold.

 

And yet. 

 

Also a graveyard, where we roam among headstones, 

themselves the bodies disinterred by rapacious machines.

 

Imagine the butchery, landscapes disemboweled.

Or a battlefield strewn with dead—Ezekiel’s boneyard.

 

As a boy in Brazil, Pedro’s garimpeiro father 

taught him how to prospect for gems they cut and sold. 

 

Treasures, he calls his stone collection. Also  

earth’s bones that he will cut for my kitchen counters.

 

Poet’s Notes:  Struck with the beauty of the stone slabs at “New View,” I also reflected on the destruction created by excavating them, and the costs of my affluence, which enabled my decision to “upgrade” my home.

 

Editor’s Notes: I like the history in this poem, which provides a different way to view granite.  Referring to God’s universal library, granite wrested from middle earth, Ezekiel’s boneyard, and Pedro prospecting with his father in Brazil for gems, leads to the treasures in his realm, which will become the speaker’s kitchen counters.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Winner of Orison Books’ 2023 Best Spiritual Literature poem prize and a Naugatuck River Review 2024 Best Narrative Poem finalist, Merryn Rutledge is widely published. Her collection Sweet Juice and Ruby-Bitter Seed is from Kelsay Books, where a second collection, To Carve a Path through Thickets, will be published in 2026. Merryn teaches poetry, reviews new poetry books, and volunteers for social justice. 

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The Body Recalls What the Mind Lets Slip

free verse

Sam Aureli

 

I want to be driven,
like the olive ridleys’ along India’s coast,
hauling themselves ashore in the dark,
their shells gleaming silver like wet stones.

 

No one tells them why.
The moon keeps her silence.
Still, they carve nests into crystalline sand,
lay turtle eggs where waves will surely rise,
where gulls already circle.

 

They return because they must,
because the body recalls
what the mind lets slip,
because even the smallest heart
is a compass.

 

I want that kind of knowing:

no doubt,

just the gentle tug of the tide,

the hush before surf breaks,

some unseen shore,

waiting.

 

Editor’s Notes: The short and long lines mimic waves washing ashore and receding. The scene is calm, and the quiet is broken only by the surf breaking as the turtles arrive in moonlight, knowing instinctively to dig and lay eggs. My favorite lines are “because even the smallest heart/is a compass.”  VN

 

About the Poet:  Sam Aureli is a design and construction professional, originally from Italy, now calling the Boston area home. A first-generation college graduate, he’s spent decades immersed in concrete and steel. Poetry is what truly feeds his soul these days. With retirement still a decade away, Sam balances the grind of his day job with the refuge he finds in writing. His work has appeared in The Atlanta Review, West Trade Review, Underscore Magazine, Chestnut Review, Stanchion Magazine, and other literary journals.

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Underground

free verse

Caroline Misner

 

It was the grey earth that rotted out this chamber.

Seven weeks of precious time

have evaporated away.

It was the earth that loosened

a grumbling wind

that caved in at our backs

and trapped us in.

 

How much longer can these walls

contain us? They grow smaller

with each breath, echoing

the slow tick of a beating heart.

 

Thirty-three of us send messages

up with pulleys through holes

bored in stone like arteries.

They send down markers that mark

the passage of days.

 

Everyday concerns seem

so petty now.  The darkness

draws its noxious liquors off

these walls—we have no choice

but to inhale them.

 

One scratch

of a match and candles are lit.

But up above they can only see us

in black and white—

fogged shadows between lens and light.

 

On the fortieth day

a child was born.  They named

her Esperanza.

Because there is hope—

hope that we will feel the sun

shine again, breathe

fresh air,

moisten our fingers in dew.

 

Above us they have alerted the media,

gathered together and sung hymns

and prayed, carried placards

with our images on them:

have you seen my brother?

Have you seen my son?

Have you seen my lover?

They are down there,

every one.

 

The ambulances idle

by the side of the road.

Already they think we are corpses.

One by one we are

drawn from our cavern

like a bucket from a well,

bubbling up to the surface.

We are the embolisms underground:

 

The crowds are too loud,

the light blinds us.

Esperanza cries for her daddy.

I open my hands.

Say that you love me.

 

Poet’s Notes:  In August 2010 a mine in Chile collapsed, trapping 33 miners for 69 days. Their story not only fascinated me but also broke my heart. I kept wondering: what are they thinking, how do they feel, how are they managing to survive? I imagined myself down there with them, waiting for rescue while friends and family gathered to pray for them. Thankfully, all 33 miners survived; one of them met his newborn daughter for the first time.

 

Editor’s Notes:  The speaker in “Underground” details the harrowing entrapment and rescue of 33 men in a copper mine in Chile, 2010. The inclusion of the birth of Esperanza while her father, the speaker in this poem, is trapped, provides a tender moment to conclude the frightening ordeal.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Caroline Misner’s work has appeared in numerous publications in the USA, Canada, India and the UK.  She has been nominated for the prestigious McClelland & Stewart Journey Anthology Prize for the short story “Strange Fruit”; in 2011 another short story and a poem were nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  She lives in the beautiful Haliburton Highlands of Northern Ontario where she continues to draw inspiration for her work.  She is the author of the Young Adult fantasy series The Daughters of Eldox.  Her novel, The Spoon Asylum was released in May of 2018 by Thistledown Press and was nominated by the publisher for the Governor General Award. Her latest novel SEEDs of the Inside Straight was published in 2024. You can view more of her work at her website: carolinemisner.com.

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EMDR 1: 1995

free verse

Nicole Marie Curtis

 

We work my heart’s soil.
Unearth waxy roots and oily immortal creatures rise.

 

Remember that little girl roller-skating,
over family tragedies

 

high on her Walkman and Innocent Man cassette?
It’s a static cling childhood,

 

and I wait 30 years for peace.
Whose globe doesn’t spin on

 

an antique pedestal of violent nights?
I’m talking bodies hitting floors.

 

This red ball bounces across the screen.
Tell me what you feel now, my therapist says.

 

All the shame for mistakes
I never made.

 

And the mistakes I made
over all my shame.

 

I dig in, hand over hand
through greasy earth

 

a pain in my temple, the catch in my chest.
Excavate the ugly. Catalogue it away.

 

I’ll frame the slivered shattered seed that says,
Here your gloom first sprouted.

 

Editor’s Notes:  As this poem attests, great strides are being made using EMDR to help people overcome traumatic events.  I like the connection between the first line, which refers to the heart’s soil, and the last line, which refers to framing and locking away the seed where gloom first sprouted.  VN

 

About the Poet:  Nicole Marie Curtis writes poetry, short fiction, novels, sketches, and plays. Recently her work has appeared in Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine, Muleskinner Journal, Heimat Review, Instant Noodles, and Anti-Heroin Chic. Nicole lives in Southern California, and she is a writer and development director at the University of Southern California. Follow her on Instagram and Threads @cheeversghost.

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 General Submission

 

Kitchen Code

prose poem

Carissa Cárdenas

 

He kisses me with words until he can drop scrubs in the hamper and shower off hospital stains. Then wordlessly, he joins me, strategically assesses the triage of our kitchen for the patient with the most need. Yet again there’s too many steps left to dinner and the sink is stacked with scrubbing and the dog waits at the door to be relieved and our little love is fussing at my feet with abandoned makeshift utensil toys strewn about, hazardous materials in a red zone. Try as I do, the day always ends in call buttons of stovepots and babies and dogs erupting ringing pawing crying all at once. 

He stands on sore feet, scrubs or sways until the situation is stabilized. Clean dishes line the counters and soft snores sound from the crib. 

And then, he holds me, places an IV of ice cream, little ramekin and shovel in my hands. Between the blinds stitched together with cords, moonlight pulses through to where our hands touch in silence and reminds us we’ve survived another full moon day.

 

Poet’s Notes:  It is a commonly expressed sentiment that the early years of having young children are hard on a marriage. In my experience, there is so much rich treasure and romance hiding just below the surface in these moments that are so full of life. I don't have to do much digging to find my husband's quiet, steady love.

 

Editor’s Notes:  “Code” takes on a medical connotation when the poem and triage begin.  Finding out at the end that it was a “full moon day” adds a touch of humor, which is always welcome after a day like the one described.  VN

 

Editor’s Notes: In a reading period of many, many fine poems, this was the one poem I couldn’t let go.  Of all the poems submitted, this one struck me as the most tender, the most giving, the most hopeful in an interrogative world.  For those reasons, it is my editor’s pick.  CAS

 

About the Poet:  Carissa Cárdenas is a poet from Orlando, Florida, who studied at Valencia College and the University of Central Florida, earning a Bachelor’s in Interdisciplinary Studies. Carissa’s dream to be published first came true with the notification that her work was selected for the Phoenix magazine’s 2019 edition, to which she was again published in 2020. Her work has also been featured in the anthology Finders Keepers published by Poets Choice and in the upcoming anthology The Writer’s Journal Vol 2: Doors. Her dream is to spread her passion for the beauty and power that words hold through teaching and raising her own children.

 

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Frequent Contributor News

Current & Former FCs

Vivian Finley Nida and Terri Lynn Cummings are presenting their original ekphrastic poetry through book reviews of Renoir's Dancer:  The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt this fall and winter. In addition, they are presenting book reviews of Poets in Conversation:  25 Years of the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Poetry Series at Oklahoma City University (OCU).  In spring 2025, Nida served as chief editor and Cummings as publisher for Poets in Conversation through Cummings' independent poetry house, Village Books Press. Both continue to serve on the OCU Advisory Board of Film & Literature that hosts the poetry series.

Charles A. Swanson will soon be a featured poet in the forthcoming print anthology, Tributaria. Artists, storytellers, essayists, and poets focus on the Ohio River watershed in this intriguing work. Look for it soon from Dos Madres Press.

Mary Soon Lee’s poem, "What Death Reads," appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July/August 2025. "How to Save the Dynasty" appeared in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #65, August 2025, and "Not Like This" was reprinted in the Worldcon 2025 Souvenir Book (the poem first appeared in Apex Magazine).

 

Alessio Zanelli has begun work on his seventh poetry collection titled All There Is To Know. It is scheduled for release in 2026 and will be published by Greenwhich Exchange (London, UK).

 

Howard F. Stein had poems published in three journals. They are:  “The quiet resistance:  Poems of exile and defiance,” MindConsiliums, 25(4)2025, 1-12; “Orbiting,” Emanuel Synagogue Bulletin, March 2025, P. 6, Emanuel Synagogue, Oklahoma City, OK; and “Prairie Camp Meeting, Old Folks Daily Living Center, 2024,” The Journal of Psychohistory, 53(2)Fall 2025:  162-164.

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