This and every November template

My rating system for a sorting task:

6 Favorite (one or two; in other words, must be in chapbook)

5 Yes!
4 Good.
3 Okay...
2 Not so good.
1 Poor!

* Has issues; i.e. doesn't fit with others, insults, too risky, too risqué... as in *5 *4 *3 *2.

The following in maroon have been edited and should be in the chapbook, barring last minute changes:


*****

P36 page 36 = Cento in black/white? like back cover without photo?

Cento for This and every November

Clouds shake their heads. No need to ask your pardon for your laughter.

He walks on a toe, twists by the will of his whistle, hangs by a nail. What up-flow of wisdom will you now share from the depths of perception? How much life had been sacrificed here? Is the heart just a paper cut-out? Tonight the moon lights the pines, casts dark shadows on diamonds, sleeps in the dimples of tracks in fresh snow. Cold water shimmers down the mountain, sprays and glimmers as fish jump, in Spring the lushness hurting the eyes with the brilliance of emeralds. What we knew ... what you didn't ... could've saved you.

You always knew the taste of arsenic defined me, You knew somehow that inside each of us there were worlds waiting to be revealed in black cursive on reluctant white. Too bad I couldn't have been your friend. Most only knew labels they had stuck on me, what in their eyes I'd become. My eyes dim this grey day, but yours reddened with a cold, glow as embers. Yes, life is bitter within a shell, lonely within a cave.

No surprise you rejected my fawning crush. I have always loved most those I wanted to be. When I look into my friend's eyes is it your twinkle looking back at me? ... I fade before the flow of forever.

Like most men, I'm an amateur in the capture of hearts. And the pain you had promised was fading.

P1 Page 1 = inside cover

*

P2 Page 2 = blank?
{c}
This and Every November
© Kåre Enga 2013
[e-mail]

Printed in Missoula Montana

P35 page 35 = acknowledgements

Acknowledgements:

Heartfelt thanks to Thomas Harper, Shannon Kemp, Parris Ja Young and Ann Bodle-Nash who read, sorted, graded and commented on these lyrical prose pieces composed in November 2011. They were up to the task of choosing the best and the ones they liked the most (all eight of those are included).

"I very much like when you write to the absent - but present - one. Love letters from afar." Parris Ja Young.

"I really like them both in rhythm and imagery. I am learning more about you with each one." Ann Bodle-Nash.

"You write the seasons of your heart in such vivid color and emotion that they become my own while I'm reading, and after I read your poems I found myself dredging up my own Novembers and school teachers." Shannon Kemp.

Citations:

"It's joy that gives us wings": Emilio Rios, age 8: "otherwise it would float up to space and aliens would see it," he said, "they would be the ones with the parade." Abdu'l-Bahá: "Joy gives us wings!" Paris Talks November 22, 1911. Interesting note: this was written on November 27th, 100 years later. I was unaware at the time.

"The Jacket": "Donde el diablo se perdió su chaqueta" (where the devil lost his jacket) is a phrase used in Costa Rica to indicate a place beyond the end of what is known.

"For all those who will not understand": "Thou art even as the last trace of sunlight upon the mountain-top", Bahá'u'lláh in Epistle to the Son of the Wolf.

"Julia of the myths": Arbor Low is a Neolithic henge monument in the Peak District, Derbyshire, England.

"In a twinkling": Robert French died in a motorcycle accident in January 1972.

"This and every November": after the Alan Feldman poem "In November".

*****

P34 Page 34 = blank

P3 Page 3 = Part I and cento

*

P4 Page 4 = IO#1

Walk among these hills

         for Kelly

Clouds shake their heads. Below, dandruff covered hills beckon, lean closer. They beg your footprints, the sound of your breath. They slumber all alone. It's been so long since bluebirds left. Bring your camera, they whisper in their sleep, find one-thousand shades of white that seek to define us, a grey fence post or a wayward tree. A defiant stem of grass pokes a finger of wind-blown beige towards clouds that seek to bury them. Note the melt where a feeble sun has touched each one. Open your lungs, cry-out! We can take it, absorb it and leave no echo. Listen for muffled crow-cry, the passing of a magpie's wing, white and black beating below blue and grey. Note how the clouds scud across these hills, rear like a stallion before these mountains, squeeze in between. And there ... dandruff too. Hold it in your hand, ball it up and throw it as far as you can. No one will notice. Then note the freedom of an unnoticed act, the empowering surge of joy within you. Taste its cold pure melt on the tongue; feel its tears cleanse your face. In the hills your footprints mock the passing of another day. Your mind records it all before it's erased.

P33 Page 33 = IO#22

For all those who will not understand



You bloomed within me, a deep-red spot as bright as dawn. You shone light on my inadequacies, my shadow-hiding doubts. My mornings of marigolds and dandelions become ensnared in bindweed, choking my sense of worth, burying my heart. I struggled to cry out.

At noon I burned until I fled back into caves and become water-seep and moss then fungus-blind. One ember hid beneath the ashes. I vowed never to come out. You dragged me out. Left me to die of thirst or rot.

Vesper bells clang out over what was left. Not much. No marigolds. No morning glories. Only half-remembered regrets of what was stolen or what was lost. The ember now glowed weakly. Yet a gentle breeze had lifted hope.

Your effort to weed the essence of myself had been for naught. Moon-flowers willow-whispered "thou art even as the last trace of sunlight upon the mountaintop." Your day was done. And the pain you had promised was fading.

*****

P32 Page 32 = IO#21

Bridge players



I look at the reflection, wonder when the hair thinned to balding, the beard bleached to white. I'm no Santa, but I could be. I'm no bridge player either. I just can't handle the drama: too many suits, too few colors, too much strategy that makes my brain hurt. The King of Hearts always plays second fiddle to someone's Ace ...or worse, the deuce of trumps.

I hope I don't seem grumpy, just perplexed by the passage of time and the hands we are dealt. I've seen it many a time: clubs up the wazoo, the bid 7 spades, not a clue how to stop it.

I watch the women gather after lunch, permed blue-hair great-grannies or long-locked left-over hippies, sitting around tables with a lonely man or two interspersed. They curse under their breath then focus on making the rubber, adding the numbers, vulnerable or doubled: 5 diamonds, 2 clubs, 3 no-trump.

I won't play their game. I stick to scrabble or mahjong, even cribbage. Like most men I'm an amateur in the capture of hearts.

P5 Page 5 = IO#2

It's joy that gives us wings

         for Dennis

We must stay tethered lest we float away to feathered castles where tall spires part the grey and light streams down forever. No need to ask your pardon for our laughter. It's only gas that bloats us, urges us to flit and lift forever upward. Your ropes hold fast our sanity, anchor our reality. We beg release to seek the sky.

This is why we're who we are. Your iron feet bind to earth as minds join wisps of spirit-wind in flight. Our lives stretch out to pale thin threads. You look right through us. If sustenance be gold and silver we have no use for mundane things. It's joy that gives us wings!

We hold out fingers as if to grasp our dreams that lie beyond the reach; we seek each other; try to understand there's more to making Life a spirit vessel than sand and clay.

Yet still on this Thanksgiving Day we're bound to you. Otherwise we'd float in space and aliens would see us. They would be the ones with the grand parade.

*
P6 Page 6 = blank

P31 Page 31 = Part V and cento

*****

P30 Page 30 = blank

P7 Page 7 = Part II and cento

*

P8 Page 8 = IO#3

The show that goes on with or without us

         for Sharon

The trapeze artist moves along the ropes of her web, each careful step, each swan dive orchestrated while her consort welcomes the updraft from his audience. Each ooh, each aah propels him to greater risks. He walks on a toe, twists by the will of his whistle, hangs by a nail.

She sits in the center. The silence of her eyes! The weight of her patience! Should he come too close ...

Should she tire of his antics, a meal is never refused. Silk-spun and dangled he'll keep till hunger returns. Such is the circus played out under the canopy of bushes, the big-top of trees.

Life's web sustains us, dear friend. And our roles? Sometimes the predator, sometimes the prey. It's the circus, the show that goes on with or without us. It's art for those who come up to play.

P29 Page 29 = IO#20

This and every November

         for Gary

Thoughts flew off to somewhere in September. Lost themselves in the ebbing warmth of spent embers. I could not travel to find them. Rooted in the memories of other autumns I awaited leaf-change and the turn of directions cold winds would bring. I missed them until I forgot that once they were mine. I felt naked like a tree without leaves. And like a dead snag holding fast to the earth I was reluctant to bid them farewell. I faded before the flow of forever.

Yet thoughts fled none-the-less like the days we worked side by side so aware of the distance, the necessary chasm that kept us sane and apart. My part in that forest-fire I try to forgive, no blame placed on you. Still the same, October followed and brought pumpkins and apples and frost, yet no harvest from fields never planted. Granted they had stayed snow-covered till June, buried mud-slick in July, gasped for breath come hot August. Now the winds came from the east, backed up by a northern bone chill; branch and twig and the verdant cockscombs of summer looked more like old rotting snags.

I could leave, but where would my thoughts find a home without me to return to? Yes, those, the ones that sneak back and perch in my thinning hair, this and every November.

*****

P28 Page 28 = IO#19

In a twinkling

         for Bob

Full moon over the canyon, bright star to its right. Is it Jupiter or Mars lighting up my sight? Something twinkles in the north. It moves through star-clouds floating east. And above darkness: stars and star-light.

Which one have you traveled to? From which do you send your blessings tonight?

Or did you return long ago ... or never ascend, finding a new home for your soul?

When I look deep into my friend's eyes is it your twinkle looking back at me?

Whichever, be you starshine, the magic of moonshine, Neptune or Mars ... you have blessed me. Your light has caressed me through dark years and darker. Tonight, I pray that your light shines eternal knowing that the face I see in the moon could be yours, that the twinkling traversing the night watches over me, that the kindness you once showed me has never faded, no more than my memory of you.

Next time my friend shares his sunshine ... I'll think of you.

P9 Page 9 = IO#4

Crossing quicksand

         for Wilton

What lives are drawn and quartered with the words we weave. What boundaries define these words we use and abuse. What do words mean.

Minefields, shaded grey, trend to darkness, beg to bask in light. You stand there, a watchman to guard the fortress of justice, a guide showing the way to safety. Is it always the high ground? What about caves. Do you sometimes find yourself a slave to the landscape, a raft crossing quicksand. In the maelstrom where lies the calm; if not beyond the event horizon, far out-of-sight of the vortex sucking ever down. What up-flow of wisdom will you now share from your depths of perception.

In the world of parry and thrust you stand there in armor. The law is your bible. You know it chapter and verse. What advice do you give when you reread the commandments and the answer is no. How to break this to clients ...

Today the winter-sky is grey, full of snow. Are you that sunshine trying to break through?

*

P10 Page 10 = IO#5

Julia of the Myths

         for Julia

Stretched out on a rock, Julia eyes her audience, arm-arched, hand pointing to the sky. She reenacts the drama of Neolithic times. She plays the virgin ready for sacrifice. And then, as if blood spurt on the stone chalice ready to receive her beauty would bestow us a blessing, she winks.

Land lice lounge on the hills, stone faced and fenced-in, in this rubble empty of trees. How much life had been sacrificed here ... how many centuries of building these fences one stone at a time. Cattle move out of our way saying nothing.

The moon, sun and stars would share with us their wisdom but we no longer understand their ancient tongues. This circle of limestone, high altar, ditch and henge define Arbor Low. Even the barrow whispers in low pitched voices soft as the grass.

Grass as green as it has always been, as stone awaits the return of the Ancients. Look, they say as Julia stretches her hand, she's come back!


P27 Page 27 = IO#18

Brown eyes

         for Mark

You were born in May, my favorite month before I met you and still my favorite today. Now in November, sunset comes before 5 o'clock. Days fade slowly and my memory fades too. Who was I? Who were you? Was I the nerd with poor social skills; were you dyslexic? Yes, you were the boy of my dreams. Yes, I would still be there with you.

But dreams and memories of dreams do not define us, seldom are true. You didn't walk on water; but, this I knew: you knew how to swim in it. I just floundered. And more: the beauty within you beamed, showed you a way to live in beauty, a path you kept on traveling.

I have always loved most those I wanted to be. As a teenager I wanted to be you, dark-haired, brown eyed ... and normal. Average to others, never less than the best according to me.

Memory fades with the coming sunset, but for 40 years when I've gazed deep into brown eyes I see you and those dream-filled nights of May.

*****

P26 Page 26 = IO#17

Bare branches

         for Suzanne

Glimpsed through naked branches the memory of you in Springtime wavers: May in the year I turned 11, the year I dreamed of living in Tennessee, dreamed of following Thor Heyerdahl around the world. In December I sang "Stille Nacht" in class ... in German.

That year you turned 11 too, before the leaves turned yellow in September. Sparse memories of horse chestnuts and the awkwardness of prepubescence. I had nothing to offer you and even looking back through the kind eyes of time ... I had nothing to offer.

No surprise you rejected my fawning crush. In the following years I couldn't even speak in your presence. I knew your neighbors, made friends with young men our age who lived on your street, rode past your house on my red bicycle, walked past through quiet snowfalls in winter and the quieter fog of May. I never walked up to your door and knocked.

The trees of our old neighborhoods were naked those Novembers and every November since. Their cold bare branches still cast shadows through my thinning hair.

P11 Page 11 = IO#6

In flight

         for Pepper

Is life but a stage for your audience, this flesh mere props to act out life's lines? Are costumes chimera and voices echoes of what screams to be known deep inside? Is the heart just a paper cut-out, some random symbol?

You strut at the fashion show; you twirl at the festival. No burning-man flames better than you, burns quite as bright. The light of your eyes beams down the runway of life, awes audiences that adore you. They clap as you flap wings as if to fly.

And then you do, spread your arms wide, take a dive off the end of Life's stage. At the edge of their horizon, you soar; you pass them by.

*

P12 Page 12 = IO#7

Yaktrax

         for Lavinia

Yaktrax cross the snow-crust, the frozen mud, the ice.

She scouts the perimeter, protects her people, chants in a circle as past, present, future ... become one in a spiral from the depth of night skies, reaching towards starlight.

She watches over her daughters and sons, the Children-of-the-Earth, through seasons of mud, growth and dust. Now, to the dance of wet flakes, she'll watch even closer, which way the wind blows the clouds that bring life-giving moisture or a blanket of death. Through the dearth of it all she'll stay vigilant.

Tonight the moon lights the pine, casts dark shadows on diamonds, sleeps in the dimples of tracks in fresh snow.

P25 Page 25 = Part IV and cento

*****

P24 Page 24 = blank

P13 Page 13 = IO#8

The tail's tale

         for Ann

This is how the tale begins. Cold water shimmers down the mountain, sprays and glimmers as fish jump. A flash of glistening scales.

And this is how the tale sometimes ends. Sunset dazzles along a swift flowing stream. The sizzle of a fillet makes the day seem ... perfect ... somehow.

Yet in between there are untold stories: the raven on the wing, the dive of an osprey ... fellow hunters like you, casting a fly from a rod, hook seeking the bushes. You try to drop it gently into a dream where supper will be fooled. But who's the fool? In hip waders, you wander through waters, a touch of ice biting through layers ... a nip in the air.

But there ... between a rock and an eddy, in a deep pool lies something that bites and pulls ... but you pull harder. It tires first. But ... ah ... too small. Hook removed, it wags its tail goodbye.

So many tales. So many beginnings and endings. Each chapter a story of its own, a way at the end of a day to tell tales of the one that was caught, taller tales of the one that got away.

How some flip a smile like fins wagging good riddance and slip into the glimmer of yesterday.

*

P14 Page 14 = IO#9

Iowegian skies

         for Mandy

No eyes are bluer than Iowegian skies after the rains when clouds part and dust settles. Cotton puffs lie reflected in Clear Lake and hundreds of ponds, thousands of puddles. And no green's greener than Iowegian fields in Spring, the lushness hurting the eyes with the brilliance of emeralds.

How glad the Norwegians, poor cottars, third sons, clinging to starvation at the edge of an island, at the foot of a fjord, must've felt when they moved here and saw nothing but blue over green til they tilled the earth under and thanked her for her bounteous brown gold. So much soil! So rich and the likes of which they had never seen living between rock scree and sea depths. And here you are, their daughter, granddaughter, great great grand ... driving over the plains planted in corn, sighing past rolling fields spread out to horizons with barely a hill to be found.

No, no Nordic eyes are bluer than Iowegian skies and no Nordic slope clad in dark forest pine ... greener.

P23 Page 23 = IO#16

Questions

         for Kathy

Is it safe to leave the inner recesses of this cave? I stick my head outside to know the world's still out there, pulsing beyond my coiled form. Within my shell I only hear my racing heart. I beg it slacken.

I am the snail and hibernating bear, the cocooned moth destined for star light. I hide behind nightmares, avoid the snorting stallions of dawn.

Is it safe to say I'm drowning in this world, angry at myself? Can I surface now?

I could say I'm numb, but I'm not. In truth, could say I became dumb years ago. But these lies don't help. They only serve to hide the crumbs of growing up, the secrets I was never allowed to know, the secrets I knew but could not share. I didn't share, secret or not. I was never sure which were to be concealed.

In how many layers of shyness was I wrapped before I was 5? Why at 15 did I long to scream out rage? Then the shame ... and recoil back into myself. Wrapped in a smile, I hid behind the person others thought I was. Better to live the outside lie to protect the inner self.

Yes, life is bitter within a shell, lonely within a cave.

Tell me ... dare I be brave ... is it safe to burst forth now?

*****

P22 Page 22 = IO#15

Frames

         for Lorin

You sit there clad in somber grey, intent on your phone, emotions parading across your face. You look up, smile and wave.

The day outside reflects only grey ... but we are sitting inside where the fragrance of cupcakes and coffee blends with the sounds of the bakery: the clatter of the mixer slapping the bowl, the soft chatter around us.

You're off in your own world. 8 millimeters wide and flickering. Each frame telling a story, each scene a series of frames, tales recorded, told and retold.

I'm not bold. I don't ask you what you see through blank eyes, what emotions are held there at bay, what thoughts banished to the cutting floor, what memorialized in dialogue and film.

I sit in my own world, a still frame in black and white, no words, just action verbs moving through landscapes of nouns, named places, unnamed spaces, the hole in my heart. The whole of it adorned with adverbs and adjectives, descriptions that fail to describe and all too often hide truth.

Which punctuation or pronoun to use... Her? Him! My eyes dim this grey day, but yours, reddened with a cold, glow as embers.

P15 Page 15 = #10

The Jacket

         for O.E.

The devil left his jacket there in the hills. You didn't know that when you picked it up. You only wanted to stay warm and dry in the tropical rain. But the jacket wanted to travel, so you traveled with it; wore it everyday until it became the color of your flesh, invisible even to you. Its hood hooked tendrils that tangled your brain. Its zipper choked off your heart as you grew but it couldn't. What we knew ... what you didn't ... could've saved you. But the jacket fought for existence, lashed out at those who would've removed it. It killed in a rage when thirsty for what it didn't get, couldn't have. The jacket became you. Now the devil's returned to those hills. He's searching for you to take it back.

*

P16 Page 16 = blank

P21 Page 21 = IO#14

In the barber's chair

         for Malcolm

My hair grows out, thin on top, a bush along the jaw, dark hairs fringing the nostrils. It grows where I'd rather it not, disappears where I beg for more...

Like being 22 again, thick brown mop bleaching blond under a noon-day sun ... I would be like my picture in my passport except for the nightmares of not knowing who I'd become, not sure of the ghosts of who I was.

I had slimmed down, then slimmed more until I was a shadow of my former self, warped by the tropical fragrance, the rain showers, the burning sun. One could see through me. No one knew me.

And who knew me when you first cut my hair? Most only knew labels they had stuck on me, what in their eyes I'd become. They too looked through me.

So, I came to you, showed you my passport from when I was 22, asked you to make me look like that once more. You smiled and did what you could. The results were stunning. There I was, full-fleshed but older, balder, a fringe of white beard. Even those who knew-me-back-when, would have recognized that mug! Even those who never knew me, when I hid from the winter of their misperceptions, under a tropical sun.

*****

P20 Page 20 = IO#13

Dental work

         for José Enrique

You could pull my teeth but I'd never tell you how painful life was the year I met you. Me young and so naïve, you more certain of yourself ... and one year younger. My teeth were white and almost perfect.

They've rotted since and I've grown past my wardrobe of orange and olive shirts. Past the tight slacks your sister loaned me after I shrunk from chubby to a pale pole, a ghost clad in black on black.

More than a wall divided our beds. I had never had a brother and had no clue what to say to you. How many times did I think your family would be better off without me? Too many.

The barrier was a mix of more than culture, language and family. I almost went mute after the first two weeks. I couldn't cope and no one but your mother sensed how wrong things were. I once asked her for a tranquilizer ... did you know? I knew she worried, in spite of being ill herself.

I remember your smiling face, your laughter. Too bad I couldn't have been your friend. I didn't know how to be one. Words escape me even now. That bridge to that past collapsed long ago.

But you could pull my teeth these days. I'd trust you.

P17 Page 17 = Part III and cento

*

P18 Page 18 = IO#11

Arsenic

         for Mr. Mysliwiec

You always knew how the taste of arsenic defined me, how my meekness and fears poisoned my life, how I detested school.

You knew I knew my sulfates from my sulfites then focused on those who needed more to pass the exams. Yet, I was never neglected.

When I flew over the side-horse you were the one who looked at my wrists and sent me off to the nurse. One broken, one sprained. You explained my absence to the physics teacher.

And you were there when I took my scholarship exam, finding a desk for my left hand, the other one useless.

In the periodic table I was some rare earth no one needed. I sure wasn't gold, yet your lithium pulled me through adolescence, the valences of elements, the fickle static of electrons, helped me embrace the core of their protons, understand the neglected neutrons of atoms.

And then you gave me arsenic to test in the lab. You knew I wouldn't taste it, knew I'd get an A on the project, get A's on my exam. It wasn't just the grades that I cherished or my ability to spell and pronounce your name. It was the chemistry of teacher and student, both suffering through high school ... just the same.

P19 Page 19 = IO#12

All things sweet and Hungarian

         for Mrs. Davis

Paprikash, the principle's wife. All things sweet and Hungarian. You taught me how to write; with time, could've taught me more: how to give flight to my lyrical voice, how to soar like a poet. As you taught us English, not your first language, not likely your second, we dared not misbehave. A trip to your husband's office wasn't an option. You knew somehow that inside each of us there were worlds waiting to be revealed in black inked cursive on reluctant white.

You taught until June. I never found out if you left or escaped, these questions forever unasked and unanswered by the young. Among blue collar offspring of immigrants workers, the dialect of factories, lyrics mixed with melodies of Poland and Italy, Ireland and Germany, you brought harmony and peace.

Taught us to speak, to share it on paper. Like paprikash: Hungarian, peppery and sweet.


Older version:

Cento for This and every November

Clouds shake their heads. No need to ask your pardon for our laughter.

Too bad I couldn't have been your friend. Most only knew labels they had stuck on me, what in their eyes I'd become. You always knew the taste of arsenic defined me, how to give flight to my lyrical voice.

What up-flow of wisdom will you now share from your depths of perception? How much life had been sacrificed here? Is the heart just a paper cut-out, some fleeting symbol? Tonight the moon lights the pines, casts shadows on white, sleeps in the dimples of tracks in fresh snow. And this is how the tale sometimes ends: sunset along a swift flowing stream, the lushness hurting the eyes with the brilliance of emeralds.

You bloomed within me, a deep red spot as bright as dawn. You only wanted to stay warm and dry. My eyes dim this grey day, but yours reddened with a cold, glow as embers. Like most men, I'm an amateur in the capture of hearts. No surprise you rejected my fawning crush. I have always loved most those I wanted to be. When I look into my friend's eyes is it your twinkle looking back at me? I could leave but where would my thoughts find a home without me to return to?

But life is bitter within a shell, lonely within a cave. It's art for those who come out and play.

Acknowledgements:

Heartfelt thanks to Thomas Harper, Shannon Kemp, Parris Ja Young and Ann Bodle-Nash who read, sorted, graded and commented on these lyrical prose pieces composed in November 2011. They were up to the task of choosing the best and the ones they liked the most (all eight of those are included).

"I very much like when you write to the absent - but present - one. Love letters from afar." Parris Ja Young.

"I really like them both in rhythm and imagery. I am learning more about you with each one." Ann Bodle-Nash.

"You write the seasons of your heart in such vivid color and emotion that they become my own while I'm reading, and after I read your poems I found myself dredging up my own Novembers and school teachers." Shannon Kemp.

Citations:

"It's joy that gives us wings": Emilio Rios, age 8: "otherwise it would float up to space and aliens would see it," he said, "they would be the ones with the parade." Abdu'l-Bahá: "Joy gives us wings!" Paris Talks November 22, 1911. Interesting note: this was written on November 27th, 100 years later. I was unaware at the time.

"The Jacket": "Donde el diablo se perdió su chaqueta" (where the devil lost his jacket) is a phrase used in Costa Rica to indicate a place beyond the end of what is known.

"For all those who will not understand": "Thou art even as the last trace of sunlight upon the mountain-top", Bahá'u'lláh in Epistle to the Son of the Wolf.

"Julia of the myths": Arbor Low is a Neolithic henge monument in the Peak District, Derbyshire, England.

"In a twinkling": Robert French died in a motorcycle accident in January 1972

"This and every November": after the Alan Feldman poem "In November".

This and every November © Kåre Enga 2013 All poems © Kåre Enga 2011.

#1 Score:15.3 AGE? older over younger

Black

There was a cat, black, purring... then it was lost... and you were lost too. Too unaware of the perils felines face. We were aware. Too aware you were overwhelmed; but, what could we do? Cats hide; cats get injured; cats fall from high places and die. And we can't tell you that. How a cat can die in so many ways, suffer in so many ways.

You suffer but there's no way to reach you. Tell you that a cat can climb down stairs, sneak into closets, escape through doors, run away. She's too young to do that you say. And those of us who know cats cannot argue.

You don't go outside; you pout in your room, which, by-the-way, is quite the disaster. Did you lift up the boxes, move them, look down inside? You say you can hear her cry thru the wall; but, I hear nothing. And the janitor says he's already checked. What the heck! If someone finds her they'll ask around or call the Humane Society, I bet. Have you called them? No. Not yet...

Cats can be resilient and survive a couple days without food, even without water but I don't want to belabor the point; still, I'd love to talk to your caseworker. It's tough being young and not have the skills to take care of yourself, much less take care of a cat; but, we all have to learn somehow, start somewhere and having seen the cat purr, wrapped around your neck, close to your chest, tells me having a cat was a good thing for you.

But it's lost and you're lost and none of us has a clue what to do.


#2 Score: 18.3 in chapbook *FAV Ann*

Iowegian skies

No eyes are bluer than Iowegian skies after the rains when clouds part and dust settles. Cloud puffs lie reflected in Clear Lake and hundreds of ponds, thousands of puddles. And no green's greener than Iowegian fields in Spring, the lushness hurting the eyes with the brilliance of green.

How glad the Norwegians, poor cottars, third sons, clinging to starvation at the edge of an island, at the foot of a fjord, must've felt when they moved here and saw nothing but blue over green til they tilled the earth under and thanked her for her bounteous brown gold. So much soil! So rich and the likes of which they had never seen living between rock scree and sea depths. And here you are, their daughter, granddaughter, great great grand... driving over the plains planted in corn, sighing past rolling fields spread out to horizons with barely a hill to be found.

No, no Nordic eyes are bluer than Iowegian skies and no Nordic slope clad in dark forest pine ....greener.

#3 Score: 15

Tension

The heart falters or the head feels faint. How one moves through the air on a Harley or flies throughout life. One false lean, one slip on the ice ...and it's over. How the heart falters as old age sneaks in to gum up the pipes, makes the pump build up pressure, begs it keep beating ...but not so fast ...until it bursts some day or stops. Does it matter? Was it a heart-filled life lived to the max? Only hearts know.

And how the head hammers to the pulse of the pump, how the pressure builds up like a boiler ready to blow. What's a migraine if not a gasket ready to go. Now the meds have kicked in and the blood pressure lowers. Now the need to be careful when changing positions, how blood sloshes like a pan full of slush, how fainting frightens oneself till the old plumbing adjusts. Then the relief as old blood runs its course like a Vette.

Then it's flowing to the finish, not finished yet.

#4 Score: 21.6 in chapbook HIGH SCORE *FAV Thomas*

This and every November

Thoughts flew off to somewhere in September. Lost themselves in the ebbing warmth of spent embers. I could not travel to find them. Rooted in the memories of other autumns I awaited leaf-change and the turn of directions cold winds would bring. I missed them until I forgot that once they were mine. I felt naked like a tree without leaves. And like a dead snag holding fast to the earth I was reluctant to bid them farewell. I faded before the flow of forever.

Yet thoughts fled none-the-less like the days we worked side by side so aware of the distance, the necessary chasm that kept us sane and apart. My part in that forest-fire I try to forgive, no blame placed on you. Still the same, October followed and brought pumpkins and apples and frost, yet no harvest from fields never planted. Granted they had stayed snow-covered till June, mud-slick in July, gasping for breath come hot August. Now the winds come from the east, backed up by a northern bone chill; branch and twig and the verdant cockscombs of summer look more like old rotting snags.

I could leave, but where would my thoughts find a home without me to return to? Yes, those, the ones that sneak back and perch in my thinning hair, this and every November.

#5 Score: 14 GENDER? female over male

On this Day of the Dead

What thin line divides us on this Day of the Dead. Me, almost 60, you going on 120. I'm half your age and not quite ready to join you.

Did you think much about dying when you turned 60? My mother 30; me... just one week old. One can always say it was another world, another century; but, then... time passes past all of those who do not move with it. Some stay behind.

Memory erases my image of you: white-haired, soft creases, a smile wrapped in a floral print. There was a golden medallion. An owl? The Messenger of the Dead. He calls me now.

Tonight candles are lit in the memory of thousands. I should light but one. And hope you gather some warmth from the flame. Perchance my other ancestors will gather too. How little we living have to do with the dead. But the dead? Will you light candles to show me the way when I leave this world and join you?

#6 Score: 17

When coffee blooms

Snow sits in shadows that last two months. On the north-side of town I inhale coffee, listen to old music. Your sunshine cannot reach me here. Yet soon I'll return ... just like you said I would.

I would inhale coffee in bloom at the end of winter, the harvest just begun, their ruby red cherries stripped to beans, now drying under the sun. On the north-side of green-clad mountains there are shadows ... even that far south. Snow like ashes cannot bother you now.

I return. I return. Like the song you once sang, "volver, volver" stuck in my mind. I cannot unwind time to tell you how much your kindness meant, how much the kindness of your family still means to me. I return to the melody of a less stressful life. Why did I listen to my internal strife, the disharmony that kept me away far too long.

I long for coffee served with hot milk in a cup, not a mug. I long to bring it close to my lips and inhale the fragrance of flowers, slip into memories of decades long past, to sip on the north-side of a mountain town, sit in green coffee shadows and sing to myself, "volví".

I've returned.

#7 Score: 17

Once upon an office

He was a jack rabbit chewing his leg off, caught in a trap that you'd set, that others couldn't see nor imagine. It had sprung when forsythia ate up the sunlight when he was sent out to pasture like a dud of a stud. Did you know what this meant? What this means?

You'd belched rules and biting regulations. You'd demanded somersaults, a jig to your tune. He felt bridled and broken and stole out the barn door, fled from your drama, your hot branding iron and your target-poor aim.

Beleaguered from the acid of this burning, he found the bitter edge of the fringe and hung on. The crumbs of famine fed his urge to survive far better than your poisonous feasts.

He hunkered down, belched out the gas of your hatred, vomited pain and picked out scattered buckshot every day from his nightmares, then picked himself up and ran away.

Soon he was like a three legged jack rabbit, loose on the prairie, his soul enamored with birds and the shadows of flight.

He pranced like a stallion in the presence of light.

#8 Score: 19 in chapbook

Frames

You sit there clad in somber grey, intent on your phone, emotions parading across your face. You look up, smile and wave.

The day outside reflects only grey ...but we are sitting inside where the fragrance of cupcakes and coffee blends with the sounds of the bakery: the clatter of the mixer slapping the bowl, the soft chatter around us.

You're off in your own world. 8 millimeters wide and flickering. Each frame telling a story, each scene a series of frames, tales recorded, told and retold.

I'm not bold. I don't ask you what you see through blank eyes, what emotions are held there at bay, what thoughts banished to the cutting floor, what memorialized in dialogue and film.

I sit in my own world, a still frame in a black and white movie, no words, just action verbs moving through landscapes of nouns, named places, unnamed spaces, the hole in my heart. The whole of it adorned with adverbs and adjectives, descriptions that fail to describe and all too often hide the truth.

Which punctuation or pronoun to use... Her? Him! My eyes dim this grey day, but yours, reddened with a cold, glow as embers.

#9 Score: 21 in chapbook AGE? older over younger

Arsenic

You always knew how the taste of arsenic defined me, how my meekness and fears poisoned my life, how I detested school.

You knew I knew my sulfates from my sulfites then focused on those who needed more to pass the exams. Yet, I was never neglected.

When I flew over the side-horse you were the one who looked at my wrists and sent me off to the nurse. One broken, one sprained. You explained my absence to my physics teacher.

And you were there when I took my scholarship exam, finding a desk for my left hand, the other one useless.

In the periodic table I was some rare earth no one needed. I sure wasn't gold, yet your lithium pulled me through adolescence, the valences of elements, the fickle static of electrons, helped me embrace the core of their protons, understand the neglected neutrons of atoms.

And then you gave me arsenic to test in the lab. You knew I wouldn't taste it, knew I'd get an A on the project, get A's on my exam. It wasn't just the grades that I cherished or my ability to spell and pronounce your name. It was the chemistry of teacher and student, both suffering through high school ... just the same.

#10 Score: 17 GENDER? female over male

Silence in black and white

There's a certain silence best portrayed in black and white. Reds scream, green grows and blue moves to our notion of sky and water.

There's a stillness beyond silence in myriad shades of grey, what's reflected in the eyes not obscured by "what color are they?". The camera captures a moment in the de-composure of characters, this still-life mimed. Even a scream devoid of sound allows the viewer to compose a horror story best told without rhyme.

And the moments (are they silent?) of developing the film, exposing the silver gelatin, alone in a room, red lit, while this sameness dissolves into shadow and light... What voice would dare describe it? What smile or stare that you've captured can speak of it? Images stay silent, eloquent in silence. It is the quiet that endures.

#11 Score: 20.3 in chapbook

In a twinkling

Full moon over the canyon, bright star to its right. Is it Venus or Mars lighting up my sight? Something twinkles in the north. It moves through star-clouds floating east. And above darkness: stars and star-light.

Which one have you traveled to? From which do you send your blessings tonight?

Or did you return long ago... or never ascend, finding a new home for your soul?

When I look deep into my friend's eyes is it your twinkle looking back at me?

Whichever, be you starshine, the magic of moonshine, Venus or Mars... you have blessed me. Your light has caressed me through dark years and darker. Tonight, I pray that your light shines eternal knowing that the face I see in the moon could be yours, that the twinkling traversing the night watches over me, that the kindness you once showed me has never faded, nor has my memory of you.

When my friend next shares his sunshine ...I'll think of you.

#12 Score: 17.3

In the leaving

You left for the dock of the bay, your reasons and rhyme strung in long alliterations lingering behind, a wake of starlight on ripples and waves. Now the night embraces you in a city so big all of your friends and all Montanans could fit in it. Do you fit in? Is this the right place? You've graced it with your being. Has it graced you in return, greeted you, smiled and embraced you ... as you deserve. Are you being you? Do its towers shrink you; does the ocean beckon?

And when the fog rolls in are you happy with wetness on your cheeks in that city that seldom sleeps. Do you weep for having left us or for those of us who'll never leave? What new weaves of images and sound resound in your poetry? Have you found fame or notoriety or seek the same: a place to call home, friends that make it home.

Have you found a job that allows you to breathe? When you smell salt in the air, hear gull-squawk on the breeze do you taste us, hear us? And what flies overheard that's not reflected in water, the womb that surrounds you in the blinking of streetlights or stars.

#13 Score: 18.3 not in chapbook AGE? older over younger

Submission

On-line words are captured, images edited. Behind the screen you're the wizard weaving magic: a yes, we-want-your-art; a sorry, this-isn't-what-we're-looking-for. Acceptance and Rejection rule, but only if Submissions are made.

My Admission? I've never wanted to be captured and edited, manipulated, hugged. But my photos and poems want so much more than I can offer. They have birthed, taken breath, learned to walk, laugh, run. They want most to fly. And you're their guy, the one with the wand, the man behind magic, your curtain a screen.

They want to soar on your screen, syllable-by-syllable, pixel-by-pixel, portraits of poems in flight.

#14 Score: 15

Night games

Queen size bed in a closet room. Which way to sleep: north to south, south to east. Does he turn when he's asleep, move like a clock dial, a spinning child's game. His boxed Candy Land begs a quilt of 4 crayon colors, a spin of the wheel if he's too tired to choose.

Queen-sized for a king whose crown lays unused at the side of the bed, with no one to share it. King-sized for a queen would be just as lonely. Light shines through windows that look out into the alley. There's no one waiting, little to see.

The queen lair waits for his return but he sits cupped in a chair. There's more to life than sleeping. There's a good book to read by moon light. Whose face does he see up there?

In a single bed one sleeps alone. In a double bed one feels lonely. Tonight the prince sleeps on a queen and dreams of an ace. What's trump in this game? Who will join him?

#15 Score: 19 in chapbook AGE? older over younger

Julia of the Myths

Stretched out on a rock, Julia eyes the audience, arm-arched, hand pointing to the sky. She reenacts the drama of Neolithic times. She plays the virgin ready for sacrifice. As if blood spurt on the stone chalice ready to receive her beauty would bestow us a blessing, she winks.

Land lice lounge on the hills, stone faced and fenced-in, in this rubble empty of trees. How much life had been sacrificed here... how many centuries of building these fences one stone at a time. Cattle move out of our way saying nothing.

The moon, sun and stars would share with us their wisdom but we no longer understand their ancient tongues. This circle of limestone, high altar, ditch and henge define Arbor Low. Even the barrow whispers in low pitched voices soft as the grass.

Grass as green as it has always been, as stone awaits the return of the Ancients. Look, they say as Julia stretches her hand, she's come back!

#16 Score: 17

And the wind calls your name

High notes quiver through dry grass in Eastern Montana. Low notes drown, drawn from depths of Pacific sea canyons. Life's roller coaster sings in arias. An orchestra's car-crash cacophony adds a counter-note.

You stand here between mountains. You sing to the plains. You're alive.

But your voice had a vision, a future not leading here, but somewhere with spotlights, a stage set for an opera. It demanded more than a musical; it clamored for acclaim, the fame of a well-tuned instrument. It did not know how easy it would break.

Still, you sing to these mountains, stand here on the plains. You survived.

Long hair, once short grass prairie bleached, flicked away the burnt fairy tale. You returned to a life you did not ask for, tried once to escape. Your voice still quivers in the harsh winter breeze. You've left the closed community that tried to choke you.

In these mountains you've returned to where the wind still calls your name.

#17 Score: 18.3 in chapbook *FAV Shannon* AGE? younger over older

Bridge players

I look at the reflection, wonder when the hair thinned to balding, the beard bleached to white. I'm no Santa, but I could be. I'm no bridge player either. I just can't handle the drama: too many suits, too few colors, too much strategy that makes my brain hurt. The King of Hearts always plays second fiddle to someone's Ace ...or worse, the deuce of trumps.

I hope I don't seem grumpy, just perplexed by the passage of time and the hands we are dealt. I've seen it many a time: clubs up the wazoo, the bid 7 spades, not a clue how to stop it.

I watch the women gather after lunch, permed blue-hair great-grannies or long-locked left-over hippies, sitting around tables with a lonely man or two interspersed. The focus on making the rubber, adding the numbers, vulnerable or doubled: 5 diamonds, 2 clubs, 3 no-trump.

I won't play their game. I stick to rummy or spades, even cribbage. Like most men I'm an amateur in the capture of hearts.

#18 Score: 15.3/3 ratings in chapbook *FAV Thomas*

For all those who will not understand

You bloomed within me, a deep-red spot as bright as dawn. You shone light on my inadequacies, shadow-hiding doubts. My mornings of marigolds and dandelions become ensnared in bindweed, choking my sense of worth, burying my heart. I struggled to cry out.

At noon I burned until I fled back into caves and become water-seep and moss then fungus-blind. One ember hid beneath the ashes. I vowed never to come out. You dragged me out. Left me to die of thirst or rot.

Vesper bells clang out over what was left. Not much. No marigolds. No morning glories. Only half-remembered regrets of what was stolen or what was lost. The ember now glowed weakly. Yet a gentle breeze had lifted hope.

Your effort to weed the essence of myself had been for naught. Moon-flowers willow whispered "thou art even as the last trace of sunlight upon the mountaintop." Your day was done. And the pain you promised was fading.

#19 Score: 17

The Launch

My bed is a ship sailing through dreams keeping me aroused all night with the memory of hips pounding hips (it's what you wanted) as I drown in my craving for your lips. That moist sweetness of tongue, moments of shared warmth.

Now the launch lies abandoned on shore, me lost on an island, a life laid out empty. Where did it go? Where have you gone? You sailed off in dreams waving at wheat, sailed across the sunlit prairie. Is it warm? Is it moist? Does it undulate with the movement of wind?

My bed is cold and it snows outside my room, the window cracked open in hope you'll fly by, see my light, enter my dreams like a moth.

Oh, to sail your oceans again! The wave and swell of its surface, the fragrance of sweat, the glistening taste of your youth rippling to my touch, storms not bothering my docked boat, the tempest overcome by locked-lips.

Dreams sail through night's depths. They ask each point of light, each spark of warmth: where have you gone?

#20 Score: 20 in chapbook

In flight

Is life but a stage for your audience, this flesh merely props to act out life's lines? Are your costumes chimera and our voices echoes of what screams to be known deep inside? Is the heart just a paper cut-out, some symbol?

You strut at the fashion show; you twirl at the festival. No burning-man flames better than you, burns quite as bright. The light of your eyes beams down the runway of life, awes audiences that adore you. They clap as you flap wings as if to fly.

And you do, spread your arms wide, take a dive. At the edge of their horizon, you soar; you pass them by.

#21 Score: 21 in chapbook

Yaktrax

Yaktrax cross the snow-crust, the frozen mud, the ice.

She scouts the perimeter, protects her people, chants in a circle as past, present, future ...become one in a spiral from the depth of night skies, reaching towards starlight.

She watches over her daughters and sons, the Children-of-the-Earth, through seasons of mud, growth and dust. Now, to the dance of wet flakes, she'll watch even closer, which way the wind blows the clouds that bring life-giving moisture or a blanket of death. Through the dearth of it all she'll stay vigilant.

Tonight the moon lights the pine, casts dark shadows on white, sleeps in the dimples of tracks in fresh snow.

#22 Score: 21.3 in chapbook High RATING *Fav of Ann*

All things sweet and Hungarian

Paprikash, the principle's wife. All things sweet and Hungarian. You taught me how to write; with time, could've taught me more: how to give flight to my lyrical voice, how to soar like a poet. Taught us English, not your first language, not likely your second, we dared not misbehave. A trip to your husband's office wasn't an option. You knew somehow that inside each of us there were worlds waiting to be revealed in black inked cursive on white.

You taught until June. I never found out if you left or escaped, these questions forever unasked and unanswered by the young. Among blue collar offspring of immigrants workers, the dialect of factories, lyrics mixed with melodies of Poland and Italy, Ireland and Germany, you brought harmony and peace.

Taught us to speak, to share it on paper. Like paprikash: Hungarian, peppery and sweet.

#23 Score: 20.8 in chapbook

The tail's tale

This is how the tale begins. Cold water shimmers down the mountain, sprays and glimmers as fish jump. A flash of glistening scales.

And this is how the tale sometimes ends: sunset along a swift flowing stream, the sizzle of a fillet that makes the day seem ... perfect ... somehow.

Yet in between there are untold stories: the raven on the wing, the dive of an osprey ... fellow hunters like you, casting a fly from a rod, hook seeking the bushes. You try to drop it gently into a dream where supper will be fooled. But who's the fool? In hip waders, you wander through waters, a touch of ice biting through layers ... a nip in the air.

But there ... between a rock and an eddy, in a deep pool lies yet another fool. It bites and pulls but you pull harder. It tires out first. But ... ah ... too small and a protected species. Hook removed, it wags its tail goodbye.

So many tales. So many beginnings and endings. Each chapter a story of its own, a way at the end of a day to tell tales of the one that was caught, taller tales of the one that got away.

How some flip a smile like fins wagging good riddance and slip into the glimmer of yesterday.

#24 Score: 19 in chapbook GENDER? female over male

In the barber's chair

My hair grows out, thin on top, a bush along the jaw, dark hairs fringing the nostrils. It grows where I'd rather it not, disappears where I beg for more...

Like being 22 again, thick brown mop bleaching blond under a noon-day sun... I would be like my picture in my passport except for the nightmares of not knowing who I'd become, not sure of the ghosts of who I was.

I had slimmed down, then slimmed more until I was a shadow of my former self, warped by the tropical fragrance, the rain showers, the burning sun. One could see through me. No one knew me.

And who knew me when you first cut my hair,? Most only knew the labels they stuck on me, what in their eyes I'd become. They too looked through me.

So, I came to you, showed you my passport from when I was 22, asked you to make me look like that once more. You smiled and did what you could. The results were stunning. There I was, full-fleshed but older, balder, a fringe of white beard. Even those who knew-me-back-when, would have recognized that mug! Even those who never knew me, hiding from the winter of their mis-perceptions, under a tropical sun.

#25 Score: 18.3 in chapbook AGE? younger over older

Dental work

You could pull my teeth but I'd never tell you how painful life was the year I met you. Me young and so naïve, you more certain of yourself ...and one year younger. My teeth were white and almost perfect.

They've rotted since and I've grown past my wardrobe of orange and olive shirts. Past the tight slacks your sister loaned me after I shrunk from chubby to a pale pole, a ghost clad in black on black.

More than a wall divided our beds. I had never had a brother and had no clue what to say to you. How many times did I think your family would be better off without me? Too many.

The barrier was a mix of more than culture, language and family. I almost went mute after the first two weeks. I couldn't cope and no one but your mother sensed how wrong things were. I once asked her for a tranquilizer... did you know? I knew she worried, in spite of being ill herself.

I remember your smiling face, your laughter. Too bad I couldn't have been your friend. I didn't know how to be one. Words escape me even now. The bridge to the past has rotted.

But you could pull my teeth these days. I'd trust you.

#26 Score: 16.5

Blue iris

What bloomed in your garden if not blue iris, Irene and what lived on your shelves if not books.

I remember hearing the silly songs of that age; in the breezeway your older daughters danced their way out of the fifties into high-school. Your youngest, my age, shared her books.

There were so many things you had that we didn't, a bedroom for each daughter, a brick fireplace in back, maple trees. On the corner your house wore the welcome sign to our neighborhood, a gathering of concrete boats floating on clay prone to floods. I knew little beyond the oval of sidewalk, that pavement that went around the block and found itself again in front of your house, head swallowing tail.

But the irises.

And the garden, meek as it was, what a wonder to me! I wanted one for myself. Did you give me a rhizome to plant? Most likely.

And the books I devoured before I gave them back? They deepened my thirst to read.

Along the back of my baby sister's fence what's left of my garden still blooms in July; orange daylilies soak up the swamp of the clay.

But your irises, Irene. Ah ... blue iris.

#27 Score: 18 in chapbook GENDER? men over women

Crossing quicksand

What lives are drawn and quartered with the words we weave. What boundaries define these words we use and abuse. What do words mean.

In the minefields, shaded grey, which trend to darkness, which beg to bask in the light. You stand there, a watchman to guard the fortress of justice, a guide showing the way to safety. Is it always the high ground? What about caves. Do you sometimes find yourself a slave to the landscape, a raft crossing quicksand. In the maelstrom where lies the calm; if not beyond the event horizon, far out-of-sight of the vortex sucking ever down. What up-flow of wisdom will you now share from your depths of perception.

In the world of parry and thrust you stand there in armor. The law is your bible. You know it chapter and verse. What advice do you give when you reread the commandments and the answer is no. How to break this to clients...

Today the winter-sky is grey, full of snow. Are you that sunshine trying to break through?

#28 Score: 20.3 in chapbook *Fav Katie*

Brown eyes

You were born in May, my favorite month before I met you and still my favorite today. Now in November, sunset comes before 5 o'clock. Days fade slowly and my memory fades too. Who was I? Who were you? Was I the nerd with poor social skills; were you dyslexic? Yes, you were the boy of my dreams. Yes, I would still be with you.

But dreams and memories of dreams do not define us, seldom are true. You didn't walk on water; but, this was true: you knew how to swim in it. I just floundered. And more: the beauty within you beamed, showed you a way to live in beauty, a path you never strayed from.

I have always loved most those I wanted to be. As a teenager I wanted to be you, dark-haired, brown eyed ... and normal. Average to others, never less than the best according to me.

Memory fades with the coming sunset, but for 40 years when I've gazed deep into brown eyes I see you and the dream-filled nights of May.

#29 Score: 20 in chapbook

Bare branches

Glimpsed through naked branches the memory of you in Springtime wavers: May in the year I turned 11, the year I dreamed of living in Tennessee, dreamed of following Thor Heyerdahl around the world. In December I sang "Stille Nacht" in class ...in German.

That year you turned 11 too, before the leaves turned yellow in September. Sparse memories of horse chestnuts and the awkwardness of pre-pubescence. I had nothing to offer you and even looking back through the kind eyes of time ...I had nothing to offer.

No surprise you rejected my fawning crush. In the following years I couldn't even speak in your presence. I knew your neighbors, made friends with young men our age who lived on your street, road past your house on my red bicycle, walked past through quiet snowfall of winter and the quieter fog of May. I never walked up to your door and knocked.

The trees of our old neighborhoods were naked those Novembers and every November since. Their cold bare branches still cast shadows through my thinning hair.

#30 Score: 20.8 but NOT in chapbook - it didn't seem to fit in, less personal, about place not person.

Gypsy

She was wild, dressed in stained glass, offering cakes, coffee and conversation in chairs and couches, their arms akimbo, scattered throughout. She was always available. Her walls collected art.

She was home to the homeless and the artists among us. She opened her arms to music and poetry, to the diversity of community that surrounded her in a city that struggled hard to embrace it. She embraced us with joy. And we hugged her with rage, rant and song. Our voices filled the crannies of her caves ...and spilled out her doors.

Here, the virgin poet first stood up to recite. Here, the cello played with the singing saw. The guitar joined the voice for those who strained to listen. Old and young, sequins and rags; all eyes glistened, enraptured by stories, rhythms, rhymes. Those were the good old times!

And she's still there on the corner of Cincinnati and Cameron. Stained glass and coffee cups waiting for her audience to return.

#31 Score: 18

Final chords

Thin rail, held up by wires, wind blowing through copper, the color of her hair, the beauty of Butte, the gold birthed in Helena, now turned grey as dirt covered snow.

She shuffles, not so sure of herself. Steps carefully to protect brittle bones, small steps the child within once took. She sips Ensure to regain some strength.

Narrow fingers search over the bones of the piano, strikes the ivory, caresses the ebony. Light flicks add color to the tones. She doesn't pound her musical friends. They've known each other for years.

Seven decades she's sang their tunes. Played the notes she's known since young. Those who hear her play join in or clap. So much applause in a lifetime of audiences.

On bad days she misses a couple of notes. On good days fingers fly with a life of their own. But bones thin out and beauty fades. In the lingering light she walks towards the light, thin as a rail, wind blowing through hair the color of spent snow.

#32 Score: 18.3 AGE? older over younger

On wings of teal

On wings of teal they glide over the marsh in front of your lens, land with a gentle plash only your ears are tuned to hear.

They do not fear the man behind the camera, but have learned to be wary. More work for you! Sneaking up, not breaking the silence, still as the willow or poplar, no more threatening than a moose, you capture them: head under water, tail sticking up, landing and taking off, guarding eggs in their nest, guiding offspring once hatched. You catch the cycles of lives and the seasons they fly through.

Now it's winter and they swim in puddles where water still flows free, huddle on ice, cuddle in groups on the bank. They are the ones that have remained through the winter, awaiting the return of the ones who have left, oblivious to the Robin who's arrived before Spring.

#33 Score: 17 GENDER? female over male

Water lily

Leaves reach to touch ice, sun streaming through ice to warm them. They are the first children of Spring, sprung from the roots of Winter, wakening from the small death, the months-long sleep.

You weep when you see them. Pause to grasp how these cycles continues, just like your ancestors wept when you were born, another generation of growth to tend to, another flower in their garden.

In your garden crocuses have bloomed and tree buds have swollen. You accept this as right. You've seen this before. How many more cycles to sing out in joy you'll never know.

Leaves in the pond stretch out their palms as if to cover the surface from below. There life teems and hides behind each new swelling bud. You check each day hoping to glimpse what grows below the surface tension.

Trees fill with leaves, buds open petals, shake loose pollen, naught remains but green, life-affirming green. You tend to your garden, the seedlings that sprout. The time has almost come.

Then the day arrives when the first bud breaks the surface, shows a hint of what it'll become. One morning you go out to the pond and there it sits on water, gold-crowned. You call out its name: Chromatella.

#34 Score: 19.3 in chapbook *FAV Parris* AGE? older over younger

Walk among these hills

Clouds shake their heads. Below, dandruff covered hills beckon, lean closer. They beg your footprints, the sound of your breath. They slumber all alone. It's been so long since bluebirds left. Bring your camera, they whisper in their sleep, find the one-thousand shades of white that seek to define us, the grey fence post or the wayward tree, the defiant stem of grass that pokes a finger of wind-blown beige towards the clouds that seek to bury them. Note the melt where a feeble sun has touched it. Open your lungs and cry-out your pain. We can take it, absorb it and leave no echo. Listen for muffled crow-cry, the passing of a magpie's wing, white and black beating below the blue and grey. Note how the clouds scud across these hills, rear like a stallion before the mountains, squeeze in between. And there ...dandruff too. Hold it in your hand, ball it up and throw it as far as you can. No one will notice. Then note the freedom of an unnoticed act, the empowering surge of joy within you. Taste its cold pure melt on the tongue; feel its tears cleanse your face. In the hills your footprints mock the passing of another day. Your mind records it before all's erased.

#35 Score: 18.3 in chapbook

The show that goes on with or without us

The trapeze artist moves along the ropes of her web, each careful step, each swan dive orchestrated. He welcomes the updraft from his audience. Each ooh, each aah propels him to greater risks. He walks on a toe, twists by the will of his whistle, hangs by a nail.

She sits in the center, the silence of her eyes, the weight of her patience. Should he come too close...

Should she tire of his antics, a meal is never refused. Silk spun and dangled he'll keep till hunger hits. Such is the circus played out under the canopy of bushes, the big-top of trees.

Life's web sustains us, dear friend. And our roles? Sometimes the predator, sometimes the prey. It's the circus, the show that goes on with or without us. It's art for those who play.

#36 Score: 19.3 in chapbook *FAV Parris*

The Jacket

The devil left his jacket there in the hills. You didn't know that when you picked it up. You only wanted to stay warm and dry in the tropical rain. But the jacket wanted to travel, so you traveled with it; wore it everyday until it became the color of your flesh, invisible even to you. Its hood hooked tendrils that tangled your brain. Its zipper choked off your heart as you grew but it didn't. What we knew... what you didn't... could've saved you. But the jacket fought for existence, lashed out at those who would've removed it. It killed in a rage when thirsty for what it didn't get, couldn't have. The jacket became you. Now the devil is searching the hills. He has come to take it back.

#38 Score: 18.6/3 in chapbook HIGHEST SCORE *FAV Thomas and Shannon*

It's joy that gives us wings

We must stay tethered lest we float away to feathered castles where tall spires part the grey and light streams down forever. No need to ask your pardon for our laughter. It's only gas that bloats us, urges us to flit forever upward. Your ropes hold fast our sanity, anchor our reality. We beg release to seek the sky.

This is why we're who we are. Your iron feet are bound to earth; our minds join wisps of spirit-wind in flight. Our lives stretch out to pale thin threads. You look right through us. If sustenance be gold and silver we have no use for mundane things. It's joy that gives us wings.

We hold out fingers as if to grasp our dreams that lie beyond the reach; we seek each other; try to understand there's more to making Life a spirit vessel than sand and clay.

Yet still on this Thanksgiving Day we're bound to you. Otherwise we would float up to space and aliens would see us. They would be the ones with the parade.

#39 Score: 17.8

What to tell orphans?

From womb to tomb we carry scars. Better to apply ointment and bandage, not pick at scabs. Best to not even notice. Like wrinkles that greet us in the morning mirror they're only signs of struggle; like breath that fogs the glassy surface, a sign we're still alive, that we've survived this war.

What then to tell orphans who only wish to be of some use? How to say that the path beyond the womb of youth and obligations awaits them all, long before the tomb will take them.

How along the stone hedges of life roses bloom and apples ripen, that between the stone moss grows, that stones know well how short the lives of humans are. Those that pass them by, the ones that stop. Stones are patient waiting an aging orphan's glance, the halt, the opening of ears and eyes. Only then can the fragrances of childhood be recaptured, breathed in once more and the roughness of rocks under fingertips be welcomed along with soft soil and smooth stones. How grooves capture and hold the seeds of new life.

Now scars heal and wrinkles deepen. Now flesh flows free from bones and the essence of once sad orphans seeps with joy between the patient stones.

#40 Score: 15 AGE? younger over older

This night before snow

The night before snowfall; this night before snow. Sidewalks glisten in the damp; droplets gather on the windshields, early winter tears.

The calm before the storm, Girl, calm before storms. I hear your voice. Sing me the blues. Sing your tune before the snowstorm buries the tears, before the sordid leavings of a dirty city are covered with white. Snow will cover dirt ...as if all remains could be cleansed. You know it ain't clean, Girl, you know it ain't so. Sing me the blues before the storm takes it all away in a gust. Croon long, sad and slow and a tad off-key. Before the tumult muffles your voice, sing blue skies of yesterday, blue skies for the morrow.

Sing us the blues, Girl, sing it all night long. ...with snowdrops for tears ...and blue shadowed drifts come morning.

#41 Score: 18 in chapbook

Questions for Kathy

Is it safe to leave the inner recesses of this cave? I stick my head outside to know the world's still out there, pulsing beyond my coiled form. Within my shell I only hear my racing heart. I beg it slacken.

I am the snail and hibernating bear, the cocooned moth destined for star light. I hide behind nightmares, avoid the snorting stallions of dawn.

Is it safe to say I'm drowning in this world, angry at myself. Can I surface now?

I could say I'm numb, but I'm not. In truth, could say I became numb years ago. But these lies don't help. They only serve to hide the numbness of growing up, the secrets I was never allowed to know, the secrets I knew but could not share. I didn't share, secret or not. I was never sure which were to be concealed.

In how many layers of shyness was I wrapped before I was 5. Why at 15 did I long to scream out rage. Then the shame ...and recoil back into myself. Wrapped in a smile, I hid behind the person others thought I was. Better to live the outside lie to protect the inner self.

But life is bitter within a shell, lonely within a cave.

Tell me ...is it safe to burst forth now?

#37 Score: 16.3/3 NOT in chapbook due to length. *FAV Shannon*

Caveat emptor

You pray for the rains to drown the heat and dust that surround you. You've paid for the drawl and big-hair, this larger than life way of living. Here between brown hills Texas barely looms larger than the tumult around the local football team's season. Be careful of cashing it in for a dream.

Not all dreams survive the downpour of rains, the flood carrying the mud of the mountain along with it. No way to leave; the road's been washed out. And the heat. Not as hot as you're used to, just humid or worse. Not the dry of the oven but a pot boiling steam. And you in it.

But you say you'll have a/c. After a black-out, you'll learn to sit under a tree. Did I mention the caterpillars that numb? that dangle from trees? Or the snakes that climb and then fall? Don't forget the parade of ants you don't want to play with. Life bites. And you say you want to wear shorts. You'll learn to love pants. Light ones that breathe, that dry quick, that don't become see-through when it rains. Did I mention the rains?

They cleanse the air, in their mists wafts the fragrance of flowers and the fumes of humanity. If you aren't allergic you'll love it. Perhaps not the fumes of the city, but it's better than dust.

Such a pity there's both in the city. There's culture there too. In the country there is poverty. Poverty of opportunity and fresh thought. People work from sunrise to sunset. Then they sleep till birds chirp them awake.

But it's cheap, you will chirp! Then be willing to let go of whatever you're holding on to. Everything that's imported, costs double, if you can find it. Unless it's after sunset, then it won't be available except at a bar ...if there is one. And what's available at a bar has its own price. By 10 you will swear you've moved into a cemetery.

You say you have tons of friends in Texas. Will they come visit? You'll make new ones here I'm sure. How good is your Spanish? They speak their own dialect, eat the same rice-and-beans everyday, buy fresh fruit in season (you'd best learn their names). They live peacefully.

Unless you know the hidden dramas. The gossip of who's-been-with-whom. It spices up life with an occasional fight, seldom lethal. You'll stay above the fray, you say? Which means you'll never be a part of this place.

So advice: leave the bling-bling home. It only attracts misconceptions; learn the language; unlock the eyes to what transpires around you; know that "there is a road" is a phrase usually mistranslated. There is no concept for snow; time is a construct that flows (except for the bus that's just left; they are punctual).

And "yes" usually means "no". It's not a lie; it's being polite; polite is important. Watch the eyes. If they glow like daggers, smile then leave. They are warning you not to return. Learn. Learn. Learn.

Visit once; visit twice.

Do not be generous with those you can't trust. Trust no one. Only when trust is assured can you share ...if you dare! Dare anyways. Beyond the gossip and the tight family unit (that you'll never be part of; be blessed if you are) people are friendly and the climate is gentle.

Move down to the beach if you want to fry on both sides or up to the mountains if you desire to freeze. Passion can be poison. In between, be prepared to adjust to a land and its customs that aren't yours.

When you're ready to stay, rent!

In the end you might buy into this place that will never be yours. Until then don't dare to own what you don't understand. Understand that what you've purchased is seldom what you once dreamed.