Here’s the poem featured at Poetry Daily today. Quite good, I think.

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Endings are always more difficult than beginnings.
Don’t ask me why I remember
lying alone in the grass at dusk, gored
by the tiny horns of snails,
filaments of spider-silk like threads
of starlight across my eyes. I was listening
to the orange and blue
leaves explain my countless lives,
so many that I could not make out a single word.
Their colors wound each of us
in unnameable, and different ways.
By day they are the splayed hands of children
held up in self-wonderment.
At night they are the flutterings of dying birds.
Lighting my way with a dandelion
I hold in one hand like a sparkler,
in the other a jar of fireflies,
I make my way through the forking darkness
as the leafless trees climb the night like stairs.

—John Lindgren

(first appeared in The Southern Review)

Here’s a fabulous poem….formatting just slightly different than the original.

Hangman

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First, a box for the scaffold. Next a pole, hooked
where the noose will go. Then seven spaces underneath,

like the broken centerline the father will cross when he feels
under the seat for the bottle, because it is a long way to town,

the road a running scar through the dense woods, and you
watching hard in the dark like he tells you for something

that might run out, suicidal. Ready you call, and he says E,
like you knew he would, and you make a circle, happy

for this word without an e because the father is the best
driver in the world, able to steer with just one knee,

or a thumb looped through the wheel. R, he says, and T!,
and you mark these next to the head, like the first dumb

thoughts of a man with only a straight line for a body
and another for a leg, a man who will probably be dead soon,

or else missing something important—hands, maybe, or a nose—
something he needs to live. Y comes next, an odd choice

you think so you ask why y? and he says because because,
and you both laugh, washed in the headlights that slice

through the cab like a quick and painless incision, knowing
one day, after you have a name for it, that this is joy—

tucked safe in the kerosene smell of bourbon that is the sweet,
sharp spoor of the father—how you know you could find him

if he were lost in these woods, the way animals know their own
kind, could save him with your amazing sense of smell.

H-I-J-K! he shouts, and you add ears because it looks bad
for the hanged man, the sad stick body and curving frown,

the way you will picture the father thirty years later, after
they find him and the coroner tells you not to look. O he says,

and there are two of these—not together as in booze or doom—
but separated, you know, by l and c, which, when you say it fast,

sounds like luck luck, what you wish now for the father who loves
to win and for the condemned man, who might be innocent after all,

his fate hanging on the alphabet and on this word you’ve been saving
for so long. S is for sorry, as in Sorry there is no S, and F is for fireball,

which happens in movies when they crash through the guardrail
and tumble down the canyon because the father is not at the wheel,

but some bank robber who gets what he deserves, and A is for the ashes
that are left, white and clean, dropping straight down through your hands

into the bay. In the midst of life we are in death, each in our little car,
driving though the long day and the long night till we get

where we’re going. G, he says, quietly, lighting a cigarette, and because
you agreed on no fingers you hang a heart on the skinny chest like a note

left on a pole, and he can still get it you know he can if he just concentrates,
so you hand him the bottle, taking the wheel as he leans back, eyes closed,

thinking. N goddammit! he says finally and you say Yes, yes, then silently,
like a prayer: L is for lava that flows through from the molten secret heart of the world,

down the mountain, toward the slumbering village. Then stops. The way
the father stops dead—Volcano!—in the middle of the road, then peels off

grinning, the lights of the town coming into view, the man on the page
safe now, hanging by an eyebrow.

—Jennifer Maier

(first published in New Letters)

Here’s a poem that caught me the other day.  Subtle and sweet and a little funny too.

Blink Once

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At fifteen I was what’s called bookish—
I had a recurring dream of an owl
lecturing on the Surrealists,

and I always woke from it happy.
I spent that entire summer running
the projector in the library basement—

silent movies for the kids on vacation,
cold coffee and fritters on a table
for the grownups. The films were fragile

and old and everyone laughed
when Buster Keaton fell in love. I had
the whole day to think and my thoughts

all felt sculpted, I worked hard
on each one—chiseled and rasped.
I spent evenings reading in my room,

listening to thunder. Sometimes a firefly
would stray through the broken screen
and I’d wake in the night to its beacon,

its clumsy flight. I’d say oh, Buster Keaton,
I’m still too young and our love
is forbidden. Your body’s a lamp

and I’m a boat far out at sea.
Can you wait for me, my moonbeam, my
daffodil? Blink once if you will.

—Karin Gottshall

(first appeared in Harvard Review, Spring 2009)

Last week we took River for his first hike up Little Si, which is our default for the combination of its proximity and beauty, and the fact that we can enjoy the whole thing in less than four hours. Mid-way through the hike, the trail runs along the sheer cliffs that make for stunning views up top. Huge old trees, moss everywhere, ferns and that perfect evergreen-filtered light make for a bit of a fairy-tale feel on the best of days.

We had a grand time, pausing up top for a late lunch and a little quiet, though we did pick a hot day, which meant that River and I shared some sweat on the way up. Lucky for us, the sun made for a good quick nap to dry us out and send us home happy.

If you don’t live on the West Coast and are jealous of our nearby mountains and water, temperate climate, lively local culture, community, etc….come visit us! Or consider a move our way. We’ll be happy to show you around.