Rick Campbell: Two Poems
the first bird sings that it’s time
to walk the beach, where gulls don’t sing
and herons stand silent, waiting
for a pilchard to offer itself to God.
Rick Campbell: Two Poems
Here, in the modern invention
of South Florida, I am trying
to remember a place that never was.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: On Time Passing
I wander through the rusting bulk
of Carrie Furnace and reach toward the ghosts of
Eastern European men who worked with fire
and molten ore for pennies a day to build the Empire
Sean Sexton: Poem Letter to Rick Campbell
A soft-spoken vision runs their gamut
to the end of your pages, a universe far away from mine, yet, by your
gifts, remains within reach as the ruckus of the interstate in the distance
when the wind is out of the West on such a morning as this.
Rick Campbell: Another List of Things I Have Attended to Sloppily
The garden gates, once my pride, now
slanted, ajar, hinges rusted and failing.
The rails of Della’s tree house
that somehow escaped their nails.
Rick Campbell: What I Might Want Today
If I lived dedicated
to the pursuit of beauty what old roads would I walk,
how parallel the roads to truth? Could I get
there from here, in this little poem?
Rick Campbell: English House Sparrows in the Consol Energy Center
The House Sparrow–Old World import, the first Brooklyn birds captured, purchased, transported in cages–we ignored till they overran natives, ravaged crops, windowsills, and eventually, hockey arenas.
Rick Campbell: The God Particle
This god particle, if found, might provide light
and warmth, or another weapon capable
of ending time as we know it and sending us
into the dark where even a God can’t save us.
Rick Campbell: James Dickey Said
In a Laramie bar
by the railroad tracks
our band played nights
under a sky wide and high,
stars shining like a score
Jason Irwin: Smoke Rising
Back then to see dark clouds of smoke
rising above the housetops meant that God, in his wisdom and mercy,
was still on our side.
Kristofer Collins: A Poem for Michael Wurster
The only connection I felt to the mills
was to the children of a generation of flayed men
on unemployment, the storefronts boarded…
Lynn Freehill-Maye, Phillip Pantuso: Return to Nature
Green burials go beyond not polluting or wasting. It’s about people needing and caring for land, conducting life-affirming activities there—including death.
Rick Campbell: My Uncle’s Hunting Trailer
I don’t remember
pulling the trigger, but the pistol kicked hard,
the air exploded; I missed the can.
Rick Campbell: Heart of Dependent Arising
She’s rolled into surgery
and as the drugs wash over her
she tries to remember her
Medicine Buddha meditation.
