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Julia Hones Jul 2018
Your life is made of distant springs and falls,
a straight route is not
what you own
for hurricanes and storms divert your path
to new horizons.

Will you find horseshoe *****, mussels, clams
on the stopovers?
Food awaits you
if the shores are not ravaged
by human greed, ignorance.

Your resilience is written in B95's ordeals,
a mosaic of adventures ingrained in his own cells.

The threads of your trips assemble
the places of Mother Earth connected in its roles;
nothing is detached in the collective harmony of souls.

Red knot shorebird,
peaceful messenger,
icon of strength without rage,
your story is the universal flight of awareness
waiting to be heard.
Red knot shorebirds are endangered birds due to human greed and ignorance. B95 is a survivor who has traveled the moon and halfway back in terms of distance.
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2015
~ for my friend and fellow poet
Rebecca Askew~

wherever that bench be,

I be

oxygen sweet, sharing mine,
preserving you, a necessary for me

for are you not
my very own Canadian
wild shorebird daughter,
my wailing
wild woman, kicking up dust trails,
driving across wide plains
with no-eye boundaries,
whose prayers and lamentations,
take me into mourning places,
and lift my eyes skyward

what is this,
the third, the fourth,
the nth,
poem you have extracted,
from oil drilled within me,
dug in my inky deeper places,
my tarred but oil rich sands

though our eyes have not yet crossed,
our embrace completely incomplete,
a millennia of words exchanged,
borders crossed oft,
no passport ever shown,
no visa needed,
when this will not sufficient prove,

I do not know

but with calm certitude

Michaelangelo finger extended,

when that last traverse

will be spent, at last at lasted,

the when or the wherever

this will be, a commencement ceremony,

I Know

that my spirit

you so well possess,

will come upon your request

bring your near,

no marble bench memorial markers here,

just life giving

empty Adirondack poet's chairs,

needing jams and jelly filling,

your name dedicated,

inscribed thereon, upon one,

be by my bay,

(forgive but forget cold, unforgiving Lake Michigan,)

by my bay, seagulls wail and squeak

airborne inspirations,

acting soully as watch-birds over poets-in-residence,

where words lap upon the simple shore,

for free-taking, warm lived life contained,

no talk of death, only cheating it...

This I know,

as well as the colors of

my blood, my guts, my words,

yours, the first words my eyes read this day,

this, my last belief, as my heart beats,

come summer,

we will write together side by side,

the windy invisible, indivisible

words composed,

be, that, our true *
benchmark,

of lives well lived,

forever preserved,

death defeating,

you,
help me to
see too well,

so laughing shouting,

fine woman-poet,

**I know thyself
Jack Dalton Nov 2013
I think of the waves
Crashing into the ****.
The rocks are sturdy there
In west port washington.
And on the rocks
A shorebird got closer
To where
I stood proud
On the unmovable
Pile of boulders.
I could tell you
This was it.
But a star fish
Exposed the air I breath
In a moment of beauty.
The waves flicker like lite bulbs.
The split seconds are eons
With out times way of saying
Got ya now.
You know
How the you
And ocean.
Meet in the shores
And die in the earth.
How can the spirit of mythology
Tell me the rocks where once human.
And the boy told his mother you swollowed
A pebble.  
He returned to free his uncles.
They called him the stone boy.
if I stand here for four days
Ill break down like gravel in the grange.
Stu Harley Feb 2016
thy soul
a long-winged
shorebird
rest
to build
her nest
where
heaven's gate

— The End —