By Barb Whitmarsh

Bayou City ll Branch, Texas 

 

The grass is damp with crystalline dew

Orderly white gravestones

They’re wet too

The flags are lowered

Until dawn

What leaps past it all?

A tiny fawn

Innocence growing bolder

Not a chance

For our lost soldiers

With lives ahead

No matter what for

But they were taken

In chaotic war

Cry, yes cry, spill your tears

Life moves forward

For many years

And if you cannot

Bow in prayer

Show in some other way

You care

Whisper endearing words

That many dear brothers

Never heard

Pat some markers

No matter the ranks

For all we can truly give —

Is thanks

Barbara Sillery
Cape Cod Branch

 

The sky is falling.
There’s a hole in the ground.
Hug me. Hug me, now.

 

The road is too narrow.
The hill is too steep.
Hug me, hug me quick.

 

I didn’t do it right.
I didn’t do it at all.
Hug me. Hold me. Please.

 

It just happened that’s all.
It does you know—
flat tires, gray hairs, wrong turns,
hurricanes, fires, floods, pestilence,
and then there’s that big one—Woe.
A half a hug would do.

 

It sounds better in French:
Je ne sâis pas pourquoi—
I do not know why, 
but the logic remains as pitiful.
So perhaps, s’il vous plaît,
un petite hug por moi? 

 

So here I stand
awaiting the verdict,
wishing I could
create a reason,
even an unreason
would be nice.
But what if there isn’t?

 

Hug me anyway?

by Susan Bassler
Pickford Member-at-large

Comedy:

Middle English, from Medieval Latin comoedia, from Latin, drama with a happy ending,

 from Greek kōmōidia, from kōmos revel + aeidein to sing    1300s

 

Fifty years ago Carol Burnett

Starred in her comedic variety show

Timeless as vaudeville

Slip on a banana peel

Everyone laughs

But not today

Democrats would point to recycling

Or the cutbacks in garbage men’s pay

Republicans would point to failed farm programs

Or the lapse of the work ethic

Independents would point to ineffective littering rules

The ha-ha’s  would halt in mid-air

The oxygen needed for a hearty guffaw

Sucked out of the prat fall

Political correctness has made fools of us

Comedy If not impossible, becomes anemic

Society has slipped on a banana peel

And we don’t get the joke

 

 

by Barb Whitmarsh
Bayou City 2, TX Branch

 

Had it sung but one brief song

Known one moment of Spring

Taken one brief flight

Piped in one dawn

Or one night

Had it made one boastful call

To an unknown mate

Its brief life

Would have been

An enviable fate

 

by Jill Maura Rabin, M.D.
Long Island, New York Branch

 

From Generation to Generation: ‘L’Dor v’ Dor’
(‘Give me the keys, please’)

 

From generation to generation,
L’Dor v’Dor – a song, a wish, a prayer
pouring from my lips each Sabbath,
Responsibility light years from today.

 

L’Dor v’Dor – a weight, my eyes strain
and discern elders’ traces, admonitions,
‘Do not forget’, soundless warnings,
Knowledge shared in haste over time.

 

L’Dor v’Dor – twilight fills a father’s senses, dawn just yesterday,

Struggle and accomplishment, a life defined by service,

Care, control and days slip through gnarled fingers,

‘Give me the keys, please.’

 

L’Dor v’Dor – How to find you in the darkness?’

I am dizzy from earth’s ever faster spin,

Time, invisible, yet palpable, moves me up life’s ladder,

The next ones’ breath is on my neck asking for more.

 

L’Dor v’Dor – precious, ancient words, fiery letters blaze,

Past and future coalesce, generations of truth shared

in an instant, all is given, lost and gained, my son

is next – ‘give me the keys, please.’

 

L’Dor v’Dor – a song, a wish, a prayer

poured from my lips, each Sabbath,

Responsibility fulfilled, we rise together,

from generation to generation, L’Dor v’Dor.

 

 

 

By Cornelia DeDona, Member at Large
Kingston, New York

 

The Shawangunk Mountains And Mohonk Preserve

are my church

a photographer’s dream

an obsession.

 

I return

to scramble

Giant’s Path

Rock Rift

Bonticue Crag.

 

I return

to capture black snakes slithering

through the foothills

to meditate on the serenity at Duck Pond,

snacking on wild blueberries.

 

I rejoice in making a photo

of two Turkey Vultures perched on a ledge

then follow them with my telephoto lens

as they take flight

and then circle back to

inspect their new home.

 

I witness

fellow hikers’ reflections

in pools

beneath waterfalls

the cool mist

sweaty rock panorama.

 

I return with raw

close-ups of Spring’s

trillium erectum

wild ginger, and bloodroot;

all stalwart parishioners.

 

I return

to pan

Summer’s rhododendron bridge,

and zoom into a cloud

of pink and white mountain laurel.

 

I return

to shoot Autumn’s

red oak and mountain ash,

to snap the sugar maple’s

red, orange, and yellow leaves,

ablaze in my continuous shutter release.

 

I return

to marvel at the hypnotic revelation

that is the Gunks.

 

I return

in Winter

to photograph the glacial majesty,

the mirror images in footprints left behind

to find the divine in a frosty pine.

 

I return

to capture

the golden light

the blue hour and the twilights

in slow water and ice.

 

My focus

devout

day in and day out.

 

I return.

I return.

I return.

 

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