1st December Selection

The World Is In B&W:

“Cold or Not, God Is Present.*”

When I first slow danced with you

Saving all my love for you

Saving all my love for you

We could not seem to get

Our dips and grinds in synch

At first at the time of that lunar eclipse

I thought it was the nervousness of anticipation

But now, but now years later

During another night

With the moon doing its disappearing act

Long after you’ve disappeared

Into the night’s dark embrace

It dawns on me

How presentient that slow dance really was

--Richard Velez

* Carl Jung wrote: “Called or not, God is Present.”

Moonlit snow carpet

Alert senses all attuned,

Sudden geese shadows

--Kirk Rhoads

Riff on Tu Fu’s On Seeing a Landscape Painted by My Commissioner Cousin for Li Ku

Glorious destinations in the travel magazines,

all saturated color and young jet-set glitterati,

I see these in the doctor’s waiting room.

The cursus honorum stutters to an end:

no there there, or only golf or Florida, perhaps,

a home before the home.

[the cursus honorum was the set career path for a Roman citizen who chose to enter public life]

--Patrick Mizelle

4th and 5th December Selections

The pharmacy tech—so good looking—

has filled my prescription.

I linger near, reading the labels

on aspirin and vitamin bottles.

Should I ask him--I wonder--

where, where on these shelves

are the cures for lost youth?

--Patrick Mizelle

teatime in Tokyo:
the sweetest apple slices,
from Fukushima.

--Glen Snyder

1st November Selection

Look, it’s the brightest fairy ring I’ve ever seen!

Is that Jupiter, shining through that lens?

What is Jupiter doing there?

Carrying a big old sign saying “Eat at Joe’s?”

Old merciful fatso,

Jupiter is expansive, generous, kind—

any work done under this influence

can be expected to go well, very well, with extra blessings

as unexpected as the me of civilization

Inanna brought back to Sumer from her Uncle God, Enke

Unpacking so much more than had been given

Once the White Quay had been reached.

We gaze up at you

in these uncertain times of change

and laugh with joy

and a sudden hope

--Ruth Temple