And I Wonder Where You Are (Poetry Month)

 

By Tanaya Winder

Sacred stars blanket a nighttime sky,
each light reminds us of the preciousness of life.
Your memory lives along the Milky Way,
each twinkle saying don’t forget my name.

It’s an epidemic, a sickness of the earth,
a war we enter as soon as we are birthed.
Indigenous women, girls, our two-spirit, too.
When did this world start disappearing you?

Source: Poetry (March 2021)

All Thirst Quenched (Monday Poem)

 by Lois Red Elk

 

I didn’t want to scold the sky that year, but
 Grandma’s words taunted my senses. If there
is a thirst, then you need to pity the flowers
 
in a loud voice. Ask the frogs why they are
being punished, stomp on the ground and talk
to the dried clay about cracking open the earth.
 
I know challenging the storm is risky. “Last
but not least, burn cedar and pray the lightning
doesn’t strike your town.” That night, the stars
 
disappeared, so did the birds. Perhaps it was
the season for rain or the dance. In the western
distance, we thought we heard cannon blasts,
 
looking over we watched the horizon fill with
lightning strikes. Rain couldn’t pour hard enough
over the thirsty plain. Accompanying clouds,
 
called to thunder’s voice in extreme decimals
requesting all the water heaven could send forth,
to come. Rain and more rain filled empty stream
 
bottoms. Rivers who had pulled their dry banks
farther and farther from their center begged for
a drink to startle dusty beds with a flooding roar.
 
Lives in dormant places begin to stir and awaken.
 The lives of water beings, those that swim, the
ones that hop, and the ones that fly, begin to stir.
 
That year all thirst was quenched.
 

from Dragonfly Weather, by Lois Red Elk

Lost Horse Press, 2013

Boy and Egg (Poetry Month)

 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear while the other children
laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,
so little yet, too forgetful in games,
ready to cry if the ball brushed him,
riveted to the secret of birds
caught up inside his fist,
not ready to give it over
to the refrigerator
or the rest of the day.

 

 

from Fuel, by Naomi Shihab Nye

BOA Editions by permission of the author. Copyright © 1998

The Last Word (Poetry Month)

 by Nikki Grimes

I am a door of metaphor
waiting to be opened.
You’ll find no lock, no key.
All are free to enter, at will.
Simply step over the threshold.
Remember to dress for travel, though.
Visitors have been known
to get carried away.

 

 

Source: Poetry (March 2021)

Here's an Ocean Tale (Poetry Month)

 

By Kwoya Fagin Maples

 

My brother still bites his nails to the quick,
but lately he’s been allowing them to grow.
So much hurt is forgotten with the horizon
as backdrop. It comes down to simple math.

The beach belongs to none of us, regardless
of color, or money. We all come to sit
at the feet of the surf, watch waves
drag the sand and crush shells for hours.

My brother’s feet are coated in sparkly powder
that leaves a sticky residue when dry.
He’s twenty-three, still unaware of his value.
It is too easy, reader, for me to call him

beautiful, standing against the sky
in cherrywood skin and almond
eyes in the sun, so instead I tell him
he is handsome. I remind him

of a day when I brought him to the beach
as a boy. He’d wandered, trailing a tourist,
a white man pointing toward his hotel—
all for a promised shark tooth.

I yelled for him, pulled him to me,
drove us home. Folly Beach. He was six.
He almost went.

 

Source: Poetry (July 2021)

 

 

 

 

 

A Wing and a Prayer (Poetry Month)

 by Beth Ann Fennelly

 

 

We thought the birds were singing louder. We were almost certain they
were. We spoke of this, when we spoke, if we spoke, on our zoom screens
or in the backyard with our podfolk. Dang, you hear those birds? Don’t
they sound loud? We shouted to the neighbor, and from behind her mask
she agreed. The birds are louder this spring. This summer. I’ve never
heard such loud birds. Listen to ’em sing. But the birds aren’t singing
louder. In fact, the opposite. Ornithologists have recorded lowered
decibel levels of bird song. In the absence of noise pollution—our planes
overhead, our cars rushing past with their motors and horns, our bars
leaking music onto the street corners—the birds don’t need to shout.
So why are we hearing birdsong now, when it is quieter? Because we
need it more. Poetry in the pandemic: birdsong that was there all along.

Source: Poetry (July 2021)

The Old Sailor (Poetry Month)

by A. A. Milne

 

 

There was an old sailor my grandfather knew

Who had so many things which he wanted to do

That, whenever he thought it was time to begin,

He couldn't because of the state he was in.

 

 

from Now We Are Six, by A. A. Milne

Dell, 1955