Beauty

. Great Lakes Weather Gaffe Beyond the equinox by thirty days, With trees and shrubs bedecked in glorious bloom, Onto the scene the weirdest weather strays And plunges all back into winter’s gloom. Snow...

. Those Who Go Down to the Sea in Ships a poetic paraphrase of Psalm 107:23-30 The men who go down to the sea in their ships, Who sail on the water and pursue their trade, The sound of the sea echoes back from...

. Missed Call O Muse, would you call back another time? My little boy, armed with a sharpened stick, winged with a blanket, sure that he can fly, is leaping off the countertop to try things unattempted yet in...

. Plum Blossom Blessings The pine, bamboo, and plum are winter’s friends, Yet plum trees bloom to overcome the chill And herald spring. Resilient health extends Throughout my struggling mind and body...

. The 10 Best Love Poems of 2021 What makes a great love poem? Love is such an emotionally charged topic that the answers to that question are going to vary tremendously depending on who you ask. But all the...

. Tel Shikmona Mosaics here surprise: you wouldn’t know, tramping on thistles, dry late-summer stubble and tripping over rubble, stumbling, slow, that this rough trail leads to the long-ago till...

. My Mother’s Eyes We took a ride into the countryside to search for bluebells but we first saw phlox. Delighted by the sight my mother cried, “Look at the flowers flutter on the rocks! Look at the...

. Sir Percival A quiet desperation lives within my soul: to find the Holy Cup, the Grail; to touch something beyond this mortal pen, and taste my God, His blood, from Cross’s nail. I am not worthy, this I...

. Solitude by Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827) | from German by Joseph Greene As when a cloud is darkened And drifts through sunlit sky, While through the many treetops An icy breeze does fly: As such I make my...

. Bach in Heidelberg for Marjorie Bach’s chorus didn’t leave us much to say After the Easter Monday concert in The Holy Spirit Church. Taking our way Over the Old Bridge seemed like we’d just...

. You Are Too Far from Me Send me your love for I’ve nothing to write,And my words are vacant or ugly---I slept through the morning, I raved out the night,And you are too far from me. I feel the entropy...

. The Two Corteges by Joséphin Soulary (1815-1891) | translated from French by Hadyn Adams Within a church two groups of people met: An infant’s funeral cortege, the first: A woman followed, her heart fit...

. Toasting Burns    His words ring out from windswept glens. __They lilt from lapping lochs. I see love through his red-rose lens; __I hear the midnight clocks In castle nooks chime Auld Lang Syne __As...

. Dystopia Reality is never what it seems To be.  It hides itself in shrouds of mist, In bulging envelopes of gilded dreams, In requisite pronations of the wrist That guides the palsied hand that holds the...

. Mourning the Dead by Li Qingzhao, Southern Song (1084-1155) | from Chinese by Talbot Hook Above in the heavens the star-river flows; Down on the earth the curtains hang low. As the air grows chill, and my...

. The High Cost of Low Prices Poetry is what I treasure. Books of poems give me pleasure, but my grief’s been hard to measure, since I did some shopping. “50 Famous Poems”---nifty! Now on sale for just...

. The Joys of Spring a pantoum It’s here—sweet long-awaited spring. New blooms smell lovely; skies are blue. The trilling birds are on the wing. Earth has awakened; life is new. New blooms smell lovely;...

. Disambiguation As in the dawn the nature of the beams Of light invading chambers---how they glint, Conceal with shade, or paint with rosy tint--- Reveals the day, not as it is but seems, So, in the natal...

. To Tchaikovsky by A.N. Apukhtin (1840-1893) | Translated from Russian by Olga Dumer With my musician friend’s departure A minor key pervades my lines. Yet, like a fugue’s evolving texture, Old...

. The English Cantos: StairWell Canto 4 Leaving a broken relationship of the past behind in Canto 3, the poet enters a new world of education and what that means. Before entering a specific establishment, the...

. Rescuing Contemporary Poetry from Vers Libre The conservative & informal vs. the free Before addressing my thesis, let me explain my choice of the word conservative in identifying a category of poetry,...

. The Heroes of Beijing On the Jan. 21 Movie Premiere of Unsilenced, Days Before the Beijing Winter Olympics As great as it may be to send those hockey Pucks on icy wisps of air into A net as sweet as tightly...

. Apocalypse The fractured sky splits, flaming at the edge— The earth heaves upwards in explosive wrath. No eye can bear the clay-caked risen dead Sleepwalking through the streets in blackened shrouds. The...

. To Sleep, to Sleep by Friedrich Hebbel | translated from German by Sean Thompson To sleep, to sleep and only sleep And never wake and have no dreams! The bitter woes that made me weep but half-remembered...

. Self-Exile "Parue—nec inuideo—sine me, liber, ibis in urbem.” —Ovid While driving underneath I had to pray: the tunnel, God, had better not cave in— as if New York could make the earth obey. My...

. Black and Red Within a latent, pathless peak, A mountain’s womb begins to leak The flicker of a fervent hue, When primal mantles stir a brew. This billow turns into a cloud That sprinkles as a stony...

. Lockdown The day sprawls wider than a yawn, a mouth that sucks a ticking clock, a door that lets the wind blow in, but no one comes to lift their fist and knock. The rain outside is free to run and fall and...

. Sonnetized “Why poetry?” My chair leans in his chair And slides me a sabbatical-swelled smirk. The past nine months I’d shouldered all his share So he could spend his patriarchal perk In penning pap...

. Living The Dream   “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin,   but by the content of their character.” ---Martin Luther King, Jr. The USA gives thanks---hurray For...

. Let It Bleed My family believes a puzzle piece is missing, that it’s me and if they snap it in, the family will have peace. The picture will be whole. They’ll close a gap. But as I stand outside, I see...

. A Truthful Triolet I want the truth. I want to trust The words that trip from lips that lied. I want all doubt to fade to dust. I want the truth. I want to trust. Truth hurts. Truth heals. Truth's heart is...

. Obsession an Alfred Dorn sonnet As candles gently glow in amber light The picture centered high upon the wall appears to take a life form of its own. Yet, thoughts of her are stronger on this night. He...

. Caring Now, while Winter’s noisy emptiness moans In the flue, Dearest, look out at all these Somberly unimpatient silent trees Holding aloft their abject skeletons: Can new flesh somehow sprout from human...

. Civis Romanus Sum (I am a Roman citizen) As Paul stood bound and for the whip outstretched, He said to the centurion beside, “‘Tis lawful here for you to flog a wretch, A Roman citizen and not yet...

. The Artist Intuitive journey, subconscious creations refuse to diffuse while the muse makes the choice to infuse mystic magic with personal voice giving birth to original manifestations. Works will cement...

. Limerick China’s footballers haven’t a clue why they can’t go and get a tattoo, but I think it might be it’s since President Xi is afraid they’ll choose Winnie the Pooh. . . This Urge for the...

. The A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima The epicentre of the blast was here, This dome, its empty ribcage gaunt and bare, It stands mute testimony to the day A Superfortress, the Enola Gay, Took to the cirrus-marbled...

. The View from Space My helmet gone, I float among the stars As weightless as my lungs deprived of air Asphyxiating slowly, I am far From all I love and anyone who cares. The stars are dead already: cold and...

. https://youtu.be/RMcLVFNbueY . Complete poem text here. CREDITSPoetry: Alan Nordstrom (1939-)Audio/Visual Work: Society of Classical PoetsVoice-Over: Evan MantykPhotos/Footage:“Milky Way with Tree” by...

. Cascading Nation Now not so much a nation as a place for pushing through a bruit cacophony of cultures in discordant synergy, dismissing calm consensus, wit, and grace as if considered discourse would...