We sip sap as
wood pecker
would dream

of the rhythm of the

beak in bark.

Hey, eucalypt eyes.
Hello, belly birch.

Oh my moss.

By Rose Linke

Is obviously unsolved to this day.
Is a heavy blizzard subject to drought.
Is a crater in the ground launched into space.
Is the lowliest temperature in a dance hall fire.
Is said to help stem the spread of ceasing to exist.

Critics call it the finest film ever made.

by Rose Linke

The war was everywhere,
          not just in the desert      
          where we expected it to be.          
One night I heard the war in the wall
          behind my head—
          an animal with thick skin-wings
beating another toothy beast,
         claws hitting fur, wood, flesh.
         I asked my neighbor later
what it had been like to be alive
         before a time of war,
         and he said it was funny we even
have a word for it, because
         everything that’s alive
         stays that way by tearing
heat from another’s belly.

by Hannah Gamble

Autumn crept in without word or a doubt.
It slept all summer, or so they all thought.
Really it traveled round trees and plains,
To find it’s real home among the oak laden trails.

Never did it speak only scent told its tale.
Cool acorns and apples growing fast for the cold spells.

Slow seems fast when a chill rolls by                                                      
during a late summer swim on the river rock slide.                                  
The children looked round, then heard a school bell.                        
They knew the call flying through the pine trees as they screamed,
“Hurry, Hurry, only one more time!”

Round the death and dying came,
the end of young summer into a lady.  
The end of girls and boys for all.  
Into proper gentle children
dressed in sweaters and tightly rung curls.  

August 10, 2011

When pain upon pain
becomes the rhythm of the season,
the day of healing falls short of now.
When beauty in Jah becomes a greedy boat,
then my bitter white dress
I will pull up to above my ankles and excuse myself.  

Dancers jumpin’, rollin’ their thunder,
dippin’ their hips till the men start to rumble,
dancer woman watch that young girl toil;
gather in your jealous heart old woman,
she’s here to work.  

Make room old ladies, our daughters are a comin’,
you’re youth goes in the locker room;
your privies go in a flower box.  

October 16, 2010

Flowers bloom yearly
then die. We make beds
for beauty, sheeting them
to make love.  Lovers coil
wrapping skin, sweating to
make a future enshrined with
devotions to their own.
Damp ground tread on by
feet running to demand what
they want for themselves. Running
over flowers pinking towards the sun;
wild, growing without struggle, until
they are trampled.

Jan. 26, 2009

I’ll write you a hello, an uncomplicated hello.  
If you want to read, and don’t know how,
I will write you a hello.

If you want to work and don’t know how,
I will write you a hello.  

You can do what you want to do,
if you work at it long enough.  
I will write you a hello.
Keep going.  


June 15, 2008