Richard Foerster: Aspens
This morning three trees lay felled,
the roots exposed like hacked bones
in opened graves.
Judith Sanders: The Sabine Woman
But history leaps from the bushes, grabs your throat.
Your sisters’ screams explode in your chest.
Thatch is burning, sacks slit, lentils spilled.
Bhikshuni Sukka: The Way Back Home
Look at me. Even on the darkest night, I could show you where to find enough light to make your way back home.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: When the Bed is Made
How mothers, lovers, nurses & hotel maids,
backs aching, have bent over beds for that last
swift tidying.
Greg Lobas: 07:30 — Six Degrees of Separation
My best friend Dan helped pull the children
from the second story window,
little, smudged Raggedy Ann and Andy.
We had done every futile thing
we could.
Barbara Crooker: Happiness
This is all there is: the red cherries, the green leaves,
sky like a pale silk dress, and the rise and fall
of the sweet breeze.
Michael Simms: Sun Star
After churning all night
I wake to see the sun star
In the window, its perfect
Blossoms full of light
John Greenleaf Whittier: Telling the Bees
Trembling, I listened: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!
Abby Zimet: Ida Wells’ Crusade To Arouse the Conscience of America
Anti-lynching agitator, muckraking journalist, fierce suffragist and orator Ida B. Wells, used the media to fight against lynching, “that last relic of barbarism and slavery,” as “color-line murder” based on “the old threadbare lie that Negro men assault white women.”
Daniel Lawless: Velda the Seer
Touching my own cheek as she says this, as if she can see
The red palm slap there, courtesy
Of Raymond, sweet sweater-y sexagenarian
Raymond.
Amy Small-McKinney: Neighborhood
What do I know?
Anna with red wings that opened for me and hovered over the houses of bullies.
She is dead now too.
Wendy Mnookin: The Public Garden
The sun is shining and I’m content
to be myself, walking across the Common
as families queue up by the Swan Boats,
real swans parting the water
in elegant wakes.
Video: I’ll Fly Away | Clara Rose and Family
I’ll fly away, oh, Glory
I’ll fly away
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by
I’ll fly away
Emily Dickinson: My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun (764)
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –
In Corners – till a Day
The Owner passed – identified –
And carried Me away –
