Flush Left | Thomas Brush | 01 06 23

In the Glassblower's Cottage

A ship’s lantern, shaped from the dream of autumn, 
Overlooks a white and silver waterfall we would drink from 
If we could. Splinters of moonlight
Splash over a herd of horses grazing
In a field of ice. There is a gazelle
Poised above a pond in the middle of a garden, 
And there are the spinning arms of galaxies 
Where heat’s heartbeats measure everything. 

The world changes but what remains is ours
To keep or give away like the strings of rain falling
From the ceiling’s shore or the letters we wrote worn thin 
As sea stones washed up against a forest of stars, 
Or the gleaming arms of a glass tree, 
All made, like us, from water and breath and fire.

for Craig

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

The poems of Thomas Brush first appeared in Poetry Northwest in 1970. He has received creative writing grants from the NEA, Washington State Arts Commission, and Artist Trust. His most recently books, from Lynx House Press, are God’s Laughter (2018), Open Heart (2015), and Last Night, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize (2012).

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left.

Flush Left | Thomas Brush | 01 05 23

A Boat Made of Water

I’m not sure what I said standing in that lost decade’s doorway looking out at the train headed for San Francisco the rain cutting through the sparks lighting up the bay the sage brush torn out of the today’s news the crumbling cutouts of palm trees pomegranate trees I don’t want to forget what it’s like to die of a broken back broken life broken promises so much for last night’s handouts waiting for who’s next no more guns he said and wept her voice breaking over him and all those hunched in snow huddled around trash fires warming their hands barely able to hold the secrets I can never admit too many would be hurt by what I’ve become the falling sky and always the cold months dropping around me like the mystery itself like the dreams of the dead becoming alive or the scorched shadows limping across the warehouse floor the nightmare scenes sprayed across the leaning wall I can’t forget forgive me for hiding out in the junked Chrysler on blocks in the back yard spiders that never stop building their nests in the brittle hair of dolls and burnt skin help us help us she said why don’t you you’ve got nothing better to do that’s it then another funeral song that says goodbye good luck see you sometime the story of the crooked man the story nobody wanted to hear the story you carry in both hands your hopes piled on the street’s altar wild flowers bright as the summer field you once believed in cluster bombs at your finger tips James back from the war holding his three month old daughter Leslie over the swollen Skagit river to baptize her to cleanse her or set her adrift in a boat made of water wanting to watch her wave like a goddess from the other shore then turning away to lie against a cottonwood cradling her against his chest smiling at what might happen both of them sleeping now whatever it was that taught him just out of reach Katie singing dream a little dream and tell me you’ll miss me it’s the bartender ready to throw me out the third time this week ready to give in to whatever’s left it tastes I can’t resist tastes good god I want more to take me in like the river promised what I made up as beautiful as the loss of feeling as beautiful as we were beautiful

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

The poems of Thomas Brush first appeared in Poetry Northwest in 1970. He has received creative writing grants from the NEA, Washington State Arts Commission, and Artist Trust. His most recently books, from Lynx House Press, are God’s Laughter (2018), Open Heart (2015), and Last Night, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize (2012).

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. 

Flush Left | Anne Kenney | 01 04 23

Grand Canal

We tour the remnants, 
skirt the debris of petrified piles: 

oak and larch dislodged
from centuries-old beds 
of clay. Unmoored 

from silt and soil,
they sweep foundation,

pit and spall marble,
tear stucco, crumble wall.

What’s left of palaces 
lining the edges here, 

where cherubs ornamented ceilings 
and gold clocks kept time? 

Tide pays no homage 
to gilt furniture, fine fabric, 
stone-carved lions. 

It respects no threshold, 
plunders all. 

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

Poems by Anne Kenny have appeared in Equinox, South, Blue Dog Australian Poetry, Contemporary Haibun Online, and other journals. Along with co-authors Judith Dimond, Nicky Gould, Frances Knight, Gillian Moyes, Lyn White, and Vicky Wilson, Kenny’s work appears in Mirror Writing: An Anthology of Poetry by Common Room Poets (Categorical Books, 2009).

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. 

Flush Left | Cheryl Caesar | 01 03 23

The Dull Mad Fact

And what a divine relief it was when, with a tiny instrument resembling an elf's drumstick, the tender doctor removed from my eyeball the offending black atom! I wonder where that speck is now? The dull, mad fact is that it does exist somewhere.
—Vladimir Nabokov

The dull mad fact: it does exist somewhere:
the speck of soot in young Nabokov’s eye:
a billion-year-old ash of solar flare.

Somewhere a tortured cat screams out its terror,
unable to escape or to know why:			
this dull mad fact: it does exist somewhere.

Somewhere my father stands and grabs for air,
although his heart has beat its last goodbye
to billion-year-old spark of solar flare.

My brother lifeless in intensive care,
his lungs raped by a ventilator; my
dull maddening fact: it does exist somewhere.

My grandma fallen, helpless on the glare
of open radiator, heated by
the billion-year-old ash of solar flare.

Go where you will; say that you cannot bear
to think of it; say that you’d rather die.
The dull mad fact: it does exist somewhere,
lit by some distant planet’s solar flare.

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

Cheryl Caesar is the author of Flatman (independently published, 2020). Cheryl teaches writing at Michigan State University, serves on the board of the Lansing Poetry Club and the Michigan College English Association, and enjoys sketching in charcoal and painting in watercolors.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left revers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. 

Flush Left | Jennifer Schneider | 01 02 23

On Foldable Habits (& Happenstance)

As a young girl, I’d been taught that habits are just as hard to break as they are to make. Conditioning carefully constructed; habits carefully formed, I worked hard to comply with well-intentioned advice. I gathered and garnered guidance (generously shared). I also assumed admonitions to remain abreast of news were often (if not always) admirable. I subscribed to (and later streamed) updates of all kinds. Headline honchos. Ballpark hits. Local coverage. Acronym soup. ABC & NBC. CNN & ESPN. Prime time in real time. I’d follow updates to remain informed of the day’s most important events. Weather patterns. Traffic tie-ups. Uptown happenings. Downtown happenstance.

As I grew and birthed offspring of my own, I continued to consume well-meaning metrics of care and consumption. Make space for rest. Avoid overdrive. Tame the hive. Dream, don’t stream. The news, it’s contrived. Despite the better judgment of my brood, I was only able to temporarily comply.

I’d been trained to consume news. Habits as hard to break as they are to make. I’d catch up on missed streams while I walked, clothed in star-speckled cotton and rainbow-hued striped socks, as I often did (and do) most days after dark. Under the night sky. I’d scan the galaxies above, my own Galaxy (Samsung) in tow. All fingers nimble. All eyes in focus. Collars carefully folded. I’d trace then order a curious collection of celestial sights. Another habit initiated in my youth, I’d recreate, then iterate (evidence of procreation nowhere in sight). From A to Z — Andromeda. Bear’s Paw. Carina dwarf. Draco dwarf. Hercules A. Zwicky’s Triplet. All while tracking less cosmic combinations and permutations on my Samsung device. Anchor news. Business bets. Rural resets. Intimations. Political Revelations. Heirs and airs on full display. Globes (both print and planetary) spinning.

Old habits persist. Change always something I (we) tend to (universally) resist. Yahoo News consistently confirms my suspicions and my predilections. We’re irregular creatures with regular habits. On a steamy Wednesday (the skies bright with heat). Thunder a distant threat, I was struck by a new live update. Strings of syllables promised far flung fanfare. In rapid-fire succession. Had I blinked, I might have missed the latest star — a phone that bends to all needs. The Samsung Foldable — a formidable development. Feature reach. Spec(tacular), by any stretch of the Milky Way. All bars intact. All backs (metal and mortal) heavy. Rainbows as rare as reunification. Star Wars more timely than ground wars.

I’d been taught that many metals are able to bend without breaking. Force must exceed a material’s stretch for metal to fold. Tasks dependent on hand, heat, or press. I continued to walk, in rubber soles with no brakes. And moonlit skies with no breaks. I counted stars as the stats continued to stream. Mayhem in the night sky. Multi-tasking madness on full display. I thought of live updates of weeks’ past. The war in Ukrainian rages on. An additional thirty-two gunshots fired in Philadelphia earlier that day alone. Temps still climbing. Those feeds now hidden at the bottom of search ladder hits and bits. New stars on the horizon. More signs of change. Not phones but phonetics. All hidden in folds of flesh and fresh pressure to maintain buzz and nests. The foldable phone surely a double (doozy). Grand slams not as common as in days’ past.

Eager for more notable forms of news (old habits persist), I scrolled and noted the Galaxy’s heavy coverage. Not unlike the weather. Of all the galaxies in the universe only a few hit prime-time consumption. Samsung a feature in (and of) the skies. Live updates more a means to promote than inform. To perpetuate and indoctrinate. The event was coined Galaxy Unpacked. The product hyped. A newly coined star. Multi-tasking part of the multi-universe. Marvels and madness persist. Unable to unpack that, my thoughts went to packing. Meteor showers on unpredictable schedules. Galaxy Unpacked carefully choreographed. I counted suitcases and conference seats. Tickets and timestamps. One. Two. Four thousand and thirty-three. And props from A to Z. Air space. Bytes. Chrome. And became consumed by a desire to unpack the titles of all the planets in the Milky Way.

Ultimately, I clicked unsubscribe. Placed my bets on the galaxies above. Tightened my belt. Tucked all wishes not on stats but stars. Traced dots and tracked patterns of Orion and moon shots. Everything I need to know hidden (in plain sight) in the skies. If only old habits didn’t persist so hard.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Jen Schneider is the 2022 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Her poem have appeared in Spillwords Press, The Write Launch, Fevers of the Mind, and many other journals.

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Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left revers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. 

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A River Sings | Jennifer Schneider | 10 26 22

on politics, potato(e)s, and chimpanzees :: shenanigan stew (soup and salad, too)

I listened to a piece on the politics of chimpanzee shenanigans as I drove through a rainstorm. All guards down. All windows up. All wipers (and widgets) operating at full steam. The speaker said something about size, shape, and showers. I listened as the rain streamed. His stream of thought took a sudden cut—with a sharp (no blunt-tips) chop—and the station transitioned to a bit on Bob’s Discount Furniture. Apparently, the purchasing team acquired a premium, also highly discounted, lot. Consumption, airtime, and purchases ultimately intertwined. Bob as aggressive as most chaps (and chimps). Eventually, the convo returned. The speaker hadn’t missed a beat. He eloquently spoke of opportunities embedded in cultures, ways to modify behavior, and windows to suppress certain (some peculiar / more not) predispositions with unusual verve (as well as an option for waiver).
My stomach growled and I realized—primate families are often as peculiar as undercooked potatoes. Random lots of spuds—a little sweet / a little sour / often more salted (and salty) than not. I wondered what chimpanzees might think about sautéed potatoes or turkey-flavored gravy atop a homemade shepherd’s pie. The speaker didn’t lie, but power is peculiar and gender dynamics (often problematically) persistent. Limitations linger even as edges sizzle amidst newly emerged hues. Chimps, like other primates, tend to pay a regular round of irregular (and highly cyclical, rarely whimsical) dues.
Despite the increasing prevalence (and presence) of women in politics (chimpanzee and others), terminology persists. The term alpha male as arbitrary as an alphabet’s positioning (and poison). Also, as peculiar as the deepest layer of politics (both primitive and traditional). Shepherd’s pie also complicated. Mixed and mashed. Don’t forget us, yell the spuds at the bottom layer. All while knowing, the pie is going to cook (also going to be dense)—no matter how hard (and whether or not) one tries. Some potatoes will end up on five-star plates. Others as one of many in a basket of fast-food fries.
There’s also lots to be learned about politics (both environmental and contextual) while living a life as an anti-Barbie and Ken dealer in an older individuals’ rest home. The kitchen served potatoes for lunch yesterday. The day before that, too. Scooped and then slopped from a 16-quart pot. I wonder what the chimpanzees would think of the variety of our daily lot (plot)? Do they know better than you and I? In a 2015 study, Warneken and Rosati found that chimpanzees preferred cooked to uncooked potatoes. Bartering and trades a common combination. I’m not sure. At the core of each carefully plated plot, it’s still the same spud.
Training is tantamount to both taste and tenacity. Food chains are as fascinating as fairness. All recipients acutely aware of potato propositions, proportions, and positionality. There’s always a little (sometimes a lot) more on one plate – sometimes the one to the right, other times the one to the left. A cucumber is sometimes dropped beside a grape. A carrot sometimes brushes a garnish. Mashed and mixed. Power clashes in peculiar ways. Pastimes as pressing as postal stamps. Meals and mayhem often delivered. Potatoes and politics a staple. Did you catch the chimpanzee waiting in the limbs of a maple?
It takes eighty to one-hundred days to harvest a potato (a curious analogy to the century-based pace of political change). Chimpanzees in the wild live, on average, fifteen years. Those raised in captivity closer to thirty. I wonder what they’d choose, if presented the opportunity. The distinction between captivity and wild grows increasingly smaller. Angles converse. Plotlines dull. Politics muddle and meddle. Averages no more than a series of mathematical applications and equations – quickly calculated numbers (across multiples and divides) amidst well-established ordered of operation.
At the end of the day, politics and play rock both hierarchy and games of hot potato. Add a dash of this. Add an extra teaspoon of that. Shenanigans both a smorgasbord and buffet. Biologists have always been used to individual variability. Chimpanzees also well aware that no two trees are the same and no potato a path to primate fame. Potatoes are neither perfect squares nor symmetric circles. Chimps are as porous as any crated lot. We all soak up the atmosphere in which we persist.
The rain cycled (and recycled) as I drove. Some rounds relentless. Others less bold. A red car to my left was pleasant (not unlike a mashed potato when properly cooked). The vehicle let me merge when I missed the passing lane. All champions (whether cars, cuisines, chimpanzees, or competing politicians) can be nice when the elements are right (and despite their power dynamics of place and any ongoing race). One of my favorite things about a potato stew is that there’s always more room in the pot. To add a pepper. Perhaps some tomato paste. Then an onion. All flavors influence others -- interactions often idiosyncratic but never isolated. All language a base. It’s always an appropriate time to season and stock. Also, to take stock of both tolerance and taste. As I drive, I continue to listen. To learn and absorb all I can from Frans de Waal on Gender: Through the Eyes of a Primatologist.
Note: Inspired by "Gender Roles, Primates and Frans de Waal," an episode of the podcast Radio Times on WHYY, the NPR station in Philadelphia.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Jen Schneider is the 2022 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Her poem have appeared in Spillwords Press, The Write Launch, Fevers of the Mind, and many other journals.  

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value our online series, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

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A River Sings | Yuan Changming | 10 26 22

Attachment: for Helena Qi Hong

1/ In Insomnia

In this 
Expansive  
Moment of
Post-midnight 
There are all
The muted 
Sounds of
Thought
Hauling
An indefinitely 
Prolonged 
Trail of feel
Like a train
Running with 
Endless cars
On a rail
Stretching afar
Beyond
The morning glow

2/ Double Nesting

  You are a bird, always in search of a nest
 (An open cage?), where your body & soul
Can both come down to perch for the cold
  And long night, no matter how far or high
                 You’ve been flying during the day

    Yes, just as her vagina is the nest of your
                Penis, her love is that of your soul

In the Moment : for Qi Hong

Where yin and yang
run into each other
Where the Atlantic and the Pacific
meet
Where a fallen leaf is blown up and
flies like a bird
Where she reveals
her fair and shapely shoulders to you
Where a pile of scrambled words
assemble themselves into a line
Where an ant tries to cross a crack
in the cemented pavement
Where you hide the fragments
of a collaged photo of you two
Where he enters to make love
while she is talking dirty with you
Now is the moment in which
to set your selfhood in mindfulness

Note: The poem above was not submitted flush left, but this digital format cannot accommodate complex lineation. 

Zen Secret about Happiness

Less = more, as many know it

But few can do this calculation in deed:
Whereby you can maximize your happiness
By reducing your desires to the minimum
As the denominator of everything you already
Have for your outer existence; in other words

Happiness = haves / wants

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Yuan Changming (pen name of Wuming Yuan) published several monographs on translation before leaving China. With Allen Yuan, he edits Poetry Pacific. His poems have appeared in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English: Tenth Anniversary Edition (Tightrope Books, 2017) and Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2014), as well as in Literary Review of Canada, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Threepenny Review, and other journals.

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value our online series, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

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A River Sings | Abigail Welhouse | 10 24 22

Daily Routine
 
another day of checking the numbers,
just part of the routine.
I watch them climb and tumble,
climb and tumble.
a lottery without a ticket,
and no real prize.
still waiting for the flatline,
like a heart in a season finale

my husband brings me coffee
and I take the laundry to the basement.
out of detergent. will the men 
of the neighborhood lose their minds
if I go buy some without putting a bra on

late last night when I got off work
a man called out to me,
"hey lady just getting off work!"
yup, that's me I guess
it's funny to me when they say
things that are simply factually accurate.
me in my uniform.
me in my daily routine

when I play wordle,
my first guess is heart
and my second is jumps.

***

Going Back
 
This neighborhood has ghosts,
and most of them are friendly.

At the coffee shop, someone 
still remembers my order. 
 
A neighbor sits in the same spot,
reading the newspaper. I know
 
that he switches sides of the street
to follow the sun. I know 
 
when it rains, he picks up his little dogs
and carries them beneath the scaffolding.
 
The dentist updates my address
and changes my emergency contact to "husband."
 
One flower shop 
replaces another.
 
A girl bikes by
holding a mirror.
 
The person who lives in our old apartment
has green curtains and I know nothing else.

***

Normal
 
Children shouldn't have to hide in a school,
locked down and waiting. It's not normal
to need dress rehearsals for active shooters,
never knowing when the curtain will go up.
Or it is normal, and it's too normal, 
when this isn't normal. Shouldn't be normal.
 
Are we accepting this? 
It feels like we're accepting this,
the inevitable news cycle. 
The thoughts and prayers.
The moments of silence. 
The decisions to do things
that don't get done. 

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Abigail Welhouse is the author of Small Dog (dancing girl press, 2021), Bad Baby (dancing girl press, 2015), Too Many Humans of New York (Bottlecap Press, 2016), and Memento Mori (a poem/comic collaboration with Evan Johnston). Her poems have been published in The Toast, Yes Poetry, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and other journals.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

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A River Sings | Sophia Falco | 10 23 22

Tiger for the Nth Time

Those twelve numbers got loose escaping
the clock glass like tigers from a cage, still
they are not timeless. A stuffed toy tiger
purchased at a grocery store sits on my bedside
table nameless matching my pink blanket
decorated in patterns of friendly tigers. 

In the realm of dreamland he, with black beady
eyes glazed over, could not put his paw up
to summon that tidal wave to stop mid-air
to retreat like his prey. I don’t pray, ashamed
I use my hands another way prior to drifting off
to sleep still woke up gasping for air.

As if I was drowning at the beach, my bed
not a lifeboat as tears escaped as I clutched
my blanket tighter as I proceeded to wet
the bed (still in my bright blue basketball shorts) 
but no tiger was chasing me even though 
she liked to use that analogy for my body.

The physiology of fight freeze or flee—
I told her I’d rather be a bird for a day 
to fly away from here yet still would be caged 
by my own mind no matter how many tigers
looking up I witnessed those clock numbers
replaced by twelve pictures of tigers.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Sophia Falco is the author of Farewell Clay Dove (UnCollected Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in The Beautiful Space, Lighthouse Weekly, The Mindful Word and other journals. Falco graduated magna cum laude from UC Santa Cruz, and is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

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A River Sings | Ute Carson | 10 17 22

The Waiting Room

Her eyes are fixed on the oversized,
galvanized wall clock,
its steady hand on a round dial,
mechanically measuring hours and minutes,
always moving, never stopping.
She struggles to suppress her anxiety.
Her husband has been in the operating theater
for many revolutions of the hand.
Then the clock strikes midnight,
doors swing open, the operation successful.
She will have her loved one back.
With a full swing of her walking stick
she shatters the glass of the timepiece.
Relief courses through every waiting vein.
Stop the hand! Make time to stand still
so that the joy of their reunion
may seem timeless.

***

Graceful Light

Where do we find you, graceful light?
With Goethe on his deathbed asking for “more light”?
In the pink line of dawn?
Or the purple stream of a sunset?
In the flickering golden gleam of a child’s waking eyes?
Or the pallid blur of an old person losing sight?
The night is never dark and the light is never far,
as when an illuminated glint of the sun breaks
through the gray clouds with its blessings.

***

An Old Woman’s Body

Staring at my reflection in a mirror
my heart rate ticks up.
The corners of my mouth droop.
I wasn’t promised that my lean figure
would last life’s entire journey,
but why are my once firm breasts now sagging?
Why the extra cushions around belly and butt
as if my cells had been inflated?
Even my arms have flaps.
My skin molts but fails to renew itself.
And what happened in my beloved garden
when my knees buckled and I couldn’t get up?
I sigh at so much dilapidation.

As I sit down,
still looking at my mirror image,
my eyes brighten and
the sides of my mouth curve slightly upward
at the sight of a toddler jumping onto my lap
and snuggling into its warm, soft contours,
loving my body just as it is right now.

***

Earth Beneath My Feet

Succulent mud squishing between my toes,
stirring dormant seeds in fertile ground
where plants can take hold.
Green shoots become flowers
that bloom in abundance in due season,
unmindful of their beginnings.

Earth is to vegetation
as parents are to their offspring,
preparing rich plots
on which the young can blossom
into adulthood, unaware of the roots
in the nourishing soil of their forebears.

***

The Rainbow Tree

Am I the tree with deep roots
and thick bark?
A burrow for a fox at my base,
a hole in a sturdy limb for an owl?
Each winter ice storms break some branches,
but in autumn golden leaves hold sway.

Once I was a sapling
curiously poking through snow cover,
stretching my greening arms toward the sun.
In spring birds flocked to the nectar of my white blossoms
and in summer hands reached for the juicy purple plums.
I was perky and secure in my harvest.

What spans the life cycle
of a budding and aging tree?
It’s a rainbow bridging beginning and end.
If I balance from one pole to the other
over curves and along bends,
I can savor the colors of each stage.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

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Ute Carson is the author of Listen (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2021). Recent work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Canadian Horse Journal, Motherwell Magazine, and other journals. She lives in Austin with her husband. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

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