Joan McNerney
Poetry Contributor
Poetry Contributor
Carol Alena Aronoff
dispels black thought;
fear slips away–wisps of cloud
dissolving into azure silk.
I look south for solace, search
for sun’s fire in my waning
inner life, seek to rekindle
a clear path to spirit.
Threads are still there–
frayed from trying
too hard or not at all.
Confusion has been woven
in my outer fabric
yet I know there’s a clarity
that shines from the heart,
so close, so luminous,
it is easy to overlook–
to look elsewhere.
Opening past habits of dead
wood, the voice complaining
like lazy wind blows
this way and that
without saying anything.
I find space to breathe,
take flight with geese
in endless lemon sky,
soar blissfully
back into my self,
knowing that I never
lost anything.
Jack M. Freedman
Tapping in his Tony Lamas
Wiggling in his Wranglers
Stimulating in his Stetson
The wind propels him
Twisting and spinning
As the guitar strums
He is a centrifuge
Defying gravity
Never succumbing
To earthly limitations
This cowboy soars
Grabbing his belt buckle
As if launching himself
Into the atmosphere
Propelled in alignment
Embraced by acoustics
Born in the USA
Stature of the
Colossus of Rhodes
Love child of deities
Product of divinity birthed
As if Icarus and Terpsichore
Conceived him
As he glides across dancefloors
He could make himself
Levitate in midair
Knowing full well
He was born to fly
Photography Contributor
Poetry Contributor
Stuart Buck
lying in the inch of fairy floss snowfall in the car park
of the abandoned hardware store but we don’t feel the cold
oh no, we are boiling mercury in our veins and the beautiful
thing is that the sky isn’t falling, we are soaring up to meet it
so I kiss your hand as we hit the screaming brilliance head on
becoming fractured perfection for those endless seconds but
oh god, we wake as only dust on the pavement and your frostbitten
fingers curl up as a dying plant in a desert of unanswered prayers
Poetry Contributor
Jeffrey Yamaguchi
An endless beach, truly. Miles upon miles of sand, sea, and cliffs. Not another person in sight. I was alone with my body and my thoughts, one foot in front of the other, feet sinking into the ocean soaked sands.
The alone part, wonderful. The thoughts, not so good. The clichés ricocheted inside my head, each effort to break out of this line of thinking just reinforcing and cycling back into itself the inherent problem
Is this a dream?
This is like a dream.
This is a dream come true.
I feel as if I am one with nature.
The ocean and the sky are as close to forever as I’ll ever know.
Like a dream.
Someone else says these things, you roll your eyes. You say them to yourself and you want to pull your eyes out of your own head. But I kept reaching for the clichés, because the other places my mind would trip itself into were very specific — too specific, in fact, about the nonessential but nonetheless highly stressful elements of the ongoing nonspecific nature of the work that I (we) do and from which I had made a vehement point of taking a break from:
The nonsensical clarification of a confusing explanation from an ongoing conversation at a regularly scheduled and always running-long meeting.
The repeated generalized ask for more creative for the more creative aspects of our most creative work.
The conference call invite details for a discussion about a better process for our debriefs after important conference calls.
It’s as if I was actually still at my desk staring at a screensaver of the beach that I was walking upon right at that very moment.
That is when I saw the birds.
In a dynamic formation the birds trailed up the edges of the glistening sea and danced with the continual roll and crash of waves, sheer elegance in the way they lifted their wings ever so slightly above the frothy waters in flux. They flew over me in a drift, and as soon as they passed, the speed of their traverse seemed to rapidly accelerate. I stopped and watched their flight to further. In the distance they shifted their trajectory and ascended the steep walls of the cliffs, whipping themselves out of view, beyond the vantage of my sight. They were gone, and my mind was set to glide as I imagined the birds continuing on with their flight.
I wanted this, to reach the cliffs and to see what is on the other side, and then to carry on, out of sight and aloft, heading ever higher and further into the unknown spaces of beyond.
There is no one to report what happened next. This is the true beauty of taking a walk alone that is long and far enough away — to get to the point where the things you (don’t) think and the places you (don’t) delve into and the (non)decisions you decide (not) to make are truly and wholeheartedly yours and yours alone.
I did not see the birds again. But I kept on moving, and I did reach the cliffs. And once I reached the cliffs, I continued on with the journey.
I am still there, sometimes, not always. I never find myself if I have to look.
Watch them disappear
keep moving and get closer
to not being there