Doug Anderson: The Wind Comes Up
…the soldiers
dismount and go
house to house,
come back out and sit
in the shade.
Chard deNiord: On Such An Evening
everything just gets sweeter as I sit under
the maple after working all day in the garden
and listen to the music of silence disguised
as birdsong and breeze in the overstory
Steven Ratiner: Fathering
After the stroke, when language
froze over in his throat, he had a hard time
with the snow–– He couldn’t say,
and the sky wouldn’t stop saying
Chana Bloch: Memento Mori
Unblessed in a downburst, I lost
my leafy summer, my lovely,
my crest, my crown.
Sydney Lea: Before the Operation
The surgeon assures my wife and me:
“a little scrape, then zip! Home-free.”
How did age come on with so little warning?
I woke up in tears early this morning,
then put on an album by the great Art Blakey.
Sandy Solomon: Reading
The pasts, the past perfects: each sentence
a forest pool shining with borrowed,
broken light
Miriam Levine: They Call It Menopause
my brain
lit up with fantasies in
which I was dominant, a top,
not on men but women.
My thrusts were cruel.
Robert Cording: Reading Poems with David
Over the phone, David begins to read
and Mary, in old age, in a nursing home,
returns to life in David’s voice, voicing
her words, her questioning
of her own bafflement
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Leaving It There
I stop weeding, stand still a while, hands on hips,
because it’s back again — that feeling of elation
tangled with grief.
Sean Sexton: Meditation Upon Dutch Boy General Purpose Paste Flux
See the plastic screw-capped container of
Dutch Boy General Purpose Paste Flux, left
by the man summoned to tear out a wall
of our bathroom closet
William Shakespeare: Sonnets 18 & 19
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws
And make the Earth devour her own sweet brood
Video: Parkinson’s Together
For a long time, I had been wanting to create a series of portraits of my husband, who is living with Parkinson’s disease. Portraits where I honor Hal as a person – his strength and his vulnerability. And portraits where I express how it feels for me to be both a witness and a care partner in this.
Paul Christensen: A Diary of Winter
The cold came in silent as an owl. The fences stared out at the clenched landscape with gaping eyes, unlocked gates, a path already flattened out in anticipation of the coming snow.
Barbara Crooker: Late Painters | Matisse
When his hands could no longer hold a brush,
Matisse turned to paper and scissors, “painting”
with cold metal carving heavy gouache
shearing shallow reliefs.
