Seems
after Sonia Greenfield's poem "Rain, Steam, and Speed" in the November 2015 issue of Verse-Virtual; Sonia's poem and my response are based on the 1833 painting J.M.W. Turner (above).

In Turner's scene, you see yourself as
barely there, racing to outpace the rolling
thunder that barrels toward you without
notice, as if you are of no significance.
And you ask me where I see myself in this
same frame, which part of the image most
resonates inside, brings to canvas something
of me that might otherwise be left unseen,
unrecognized, or unconfessed. I go down through
the list of options, questions, possibilities,
but nothing in the things you've mentioned
seems to be quite it. And yet, off to the left,
there seems to be a pale set of arches 
with their feet set deep into the waters
of the river, and atop the arches, a flat
surface, where other feet can gather, watch
and cross...




​
Threads
after Brian Burmeister's "Disconnect" in the November 2015 issue of Verse-Virtual

You began on a broken green couch, surface
intact but with an interior structural flaw,
a sagged unsupported position in the center,

Eden, where Adam in the Garden, trustee of all
creatures, no competition for either flock or
soil, still found with the bounty and position

given him, a sense of incompleteness, a sense
of disconnect, a loneliness only a companion
of his own might lessen. The woman next to you

watched the film of displaced children with
her heart, kept her eyes turned to the screen
until the end. And you, you felt within your

self an insufficiency, that your heart was
somehow defective because you could not feel
each loss with empathy, not until the woman

herself left you. When did you begin to write
these poems? Was it then? Was it then each
broken story evoked something deeper than

a distant sympathy, an injustice to be partly
balanced by a debit in the checkbook? Was it
then each sudden loss somehow became your own?




​
cue next entrance  
after "Careless Child" by Steve Klepetar in the November 2015 issue of Verse-Virtual

when the red and white flashing lights have
given over to the street-sweeper's yellow
strobe, when shocked voices of the talking

heads delivering the news have muted, gone
to take a break, a sip of something fizzy 
before they have to cover some more recent

tragedy, when the street-sweeper leaves
no trace of the story except for a gray-
green patch upon the concrete and a few

thin metal strips that have fallen from
its rotating brushes, when i slip around
the corner with a pair of pliers, hoping

to gather and twist those flat forgotten
wires into handmade lock-picks, me in my
gravel-colored rain-soaked hoodie, will

i find that small neglected jar nestled
on a nearby lawn, where it has bounced
unnoticed, yet resisting entropy, where

it remains unbroken? and when i find it
and i see the beetle crawling there inside,
will i recognize it as some distant kin

of that winged thing that lived unnoticed 
in the dusty corner of pandora's box before
she opened it? will i remember that each

small light's a seed, and that once i've
pried the lid off and it's freed, even 
a single blink is enough to cue the dawn?





Abundance
after three poems by Tom Montag in the November 2015 issue of Verse-Virtual

The afternoon sun pauses a moment
to savor the burnished copper glow

of oak leaves, the way the sugar
maple's scarlet seems to overreach

the realm of sight, so brilliant
it is nearly audible. Two robins

flit in loose formation, rest
a moment on the garden fence

to contemplate the snow peas, how
while all else in that small plot

decays, has been burned by frost,
these few plants not only keep

their pale green, but are setting
fresh-cream blossoms. In this hour

when the sun delays, it's hard to
say for certain if the rose blush

upon the robins' breasts is truly
pigment in their feathers, or if

it is another vision, another gift
of autumn, another glimpse of Light.



​
​
Crockery  
after Joan Colby's "Retire" in the November 2015 issue of Verse-Virtual

Bluebirds, hollyhocks...things you'd see in paint
Done by hand in bright colors in a tiny shoppe...
The kind spelled P-P-E, to give it a bit of quaint
And rustic neighborly, nature depicted on a crock
That's meant to sit upon a shelf and be dusted
Once a week by a maid that comes on Thursdays
Who always puts things back, who can be trusted
Not to pocket change or silver, one who always
Arrives on time. Bluebirds, hollyhocks depicted
With no trace of entropy, always in their prime,
Not a feather missing, no frost-bite inflicted
On a single petal, here they blossom for all time.
Clay is shaped upon life's wheel into crocks
Of bluebirds always singing, unfading hollyhocks.
​