Special Feature: "Lost and Found" by Adrienne R. Gordon

Lost and Found

Adrienne R. Gordon

 

I've been remembering things:

April 23, 2004,

the day that I overrode Daddy's DNR

and insisted that the medical team

place him on life support;

that they provide indisputable,

unequivocal evidence

that he could not recover.

I truly believed

there would be a miracle...

one so great

it would be known

far and wide.

Here's the prequel:

You may remember that he was

admitted to the hospital on April 2nd

and that Pesach was April 5th - 13th that year.

Here's that part of our Passover journey:

I had accompanied his gurney

to radiology for a CAT scan.

There were chairs lining the walls of the hallway,

so I sat down to get some rest

by leaning my head on my cane.

I heard a man's voice say,

"Can I help you?"

When I looked up,

I saw a young man and a young woman sitting next to him,

with an infant on her lap.

They were about 25 feet away.

I thanked him for asking

and told them I was just resting

while waiting for my husband

to return from a test.

Thinking they might need to talk,

I continued the conversation.

When I asked him the name of the child,

he told me it was Elijah.

Elijah!!!

What are the odds?

I couldn't wait to tell your father

that two angels came during his test--

and Elijah was with them.

Now everything was going to be all right.

When I told Daddy,

he kind of smiled that little smile I knew so well ... 

indulging me for one of my

wacky booga-booga interpretations, yet again!

But --

He did improve

and by the fifteenth,

he was up walking to the window,

drinking coffee that Uncle Jim bought from Dunkin' Donuts

and making plans to go fishing with him.

Then, a day or two later --

the infection.

The bitter cup that I never imagined.

I believed that there would always be

more time;

that our Redemption would be on

the last day...

the two of us...

together...

hand in hand.

But not to be.

He was gathered to wait

with other family souls.

I've accepted that

it was meant to be.

Always pray

for your father

as he prays

for you.

Editor’s Note:  This year, Passover ends tonight at nightfall. My father died at the age of seventy-one two weeks after the end of Passover twelve years ago; may his memory be a blessing.  I believe that the angels came for him on the day that they spoke to my mother, but were moved by my mother’s kindness even when she was sad, tired, and afraid for my father’s sake.   As a reward for her selflessness, I believe the angels prayed to God and asked Him to allow my father to live just a little longer as a special gift for my mother, and that God granted their request. 

I discovered this “found” poem in an email that my mother sent me a few days ago.  I arranged my mother’s words in verses, but not a single word, word order, punctuation mark, or even paragraphing was changed.

Two of the Editor's Poems Are Anthologized

The Editor is pleased to announce that two of his previously published poems, “The Legend of the Moruadh” & “Snow White,” have been anthologized in Les Cabinets des Polytheistes: An Anthology of Pagan Fairy Tales, Folktales, and Nursery Rhymes edited by Rebecca Buchanan.  The collection is available now through CreateSpace https://www.createspace.com/6205162 & https://neosalexandria.org/bibliotheca-alexandrina/current-titles/fiction-anthologies/les-cabinets-des-polytheistes-an-anthology-of-pagan-fairy-tales-folktales-and-nursery-rhymes/, and will migrate over the next few weeks to Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Poem of the Day: “dead lines” by John Reinhart, Frequent Contributor

dead lines

John Reinhart

like waiting to check out at the grocery store in August

when you’re preparing for a five-year-old’s birthday

party and the ice cream cake is melting

while the teenage employee lost in obscure leafy greens

dreads the return of school, another place

to punch in codes for obscurities that all taste

like spinach anyway – and the older lady

whose basket brims over with industrial size

tubes of ground beef, cartons of cigarettes,

and frozen grated potatoes on sale three weeks running

looks set to derail progress indefinitely

no other lines are open: purgatory

ought to be a breeze after these

hours? with no distraction beyond

aliens in the white house

celebrity love children diets

twenty-four varieties of soda

thirty-eight sweets to rot teeth

and glaring fluorescents that make everyone

look lightly queasy even against summer

tans that scream against tomorrow

today, another sign that this line

is one sad, flat preview of a future

where ice cream cake dribbles

uncontrollably onto the floor

Poet's Notes:  Born of a title, born of a passing thought unrelated to verse, born of obligations to small children, situated in the thrills and frustrations of everyday, where what happens in the wings to call forth the flashing lights on stage is far more important and difficult to execute than the light play, but the show is worth dragging a shopping basket across sun scorched and desolate grocery aisles for a hundred years because the result is a spark plug.

I enjoyed living into these images. Kurt Vonnegut in Like Shaking Hands With God said, "I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around." I appreciate his sentiment and when I'm seventy I hope I still have the opportunity to stand around post office lines and chat with imperfect strangers. At this moment, I, against all better judgment and character, often appreciate self-checkout lines and online retailers.

Poem of the Day: “We Are Still Alone” by James Frederick William Rowe, Frequent Contributor

We Are Still Alone

James Frederick William Rowe

I tread upon a dead world

Seeing but dust and rust

Sand and stone

A-crumble with the withering years

Of erosion wrought of time and folly

Sparked cataclysm

Ruining all that remains

Of life once abundant

Now dead to the last

It is cruel to visit this place

So long after life

To recognize in broken stalks

In half-collapsed mounds

And the scattered remains

Of dust-coated artifacts

Inscribed with voiceless words

The proof of ancient habitation

The mark of age-old deeds

To search for so long

In hopes of finding life

Another civilization, another community

To find its proof only

Millennia after it has perished

This is a joke

And the cold, mirthless laughter

Echoes in the wastes

And rings in my soul

I shall take the desolation as my God

And heap with unhewn stones

An altar of solitude

To be crowned with an offering

Of a golden disk carried since antiquity

By all voyagers

A token of friendship, of brotherhood

Now become a supplication to extinction

Lord over all I see

When I return to my ship

I will make no record of this place

I shall bear the miserable knowledge

Of this broken world

As lonesomely as the world itself

No one shall be burdened but I

With the knowledge of this desolation

Of the shattered hope of fraternity

Made false in death

Poet’s Notes:  A few weeks ago, I was feeling fairly somber and I was reading the 1989 Thor annual. In the backup feature of the comic, Thor visits a ruined earth some thousand years in the future as the only living creature present except the silent, God-like Uatu the Watcher. I was struck with the horrible misery of this moving story and was inspired to write a poem on a similar theme.

Instead of Earth, this poem takes place on some unnamed planet. The narrator, a space explorer, comes to explore a planet that had once hosted a civilization. Mankind has apparently had no contact with sapient alien life at this time, and in a cruel turn of fate the explorer finds proof of an alien civilization only after it had long ago passed away by some (self-caused?) cataclysm. Made miserable by the sight of the devastation, the man mourns the death of the planet through erecting an "altar of solitude" and placing his golden disk "carried from antiquity / by all voyagers" (a play on the Voyager spacecraft) as an offering to the "deity" of extinction.            

The poem is also partially inspired by the Fermi Paradox, which hypothesizes that any sapient life of sufficient sophistication might well end up destroying itself, leading to a high likelihood that we will never meet another civilization.

I didn't need to work too hard on this poem. I wrote most of it in one sitting, returning only to give its ending at a later date. Structurally, the stanzas of nine verses each were hardly in need of a touch up. Here and there I added and subtracted, reworking wording and such, but it was an easy poem to compose, and one with I am happy. Though I wrote it in a somber mood, and it has its genesis in that mindset, my normal thoughts on such things are gloomy enough as is that I do not think the inspiration was solely due to a melancholic spell on my part, but rather simply enhanced by it. 

Poem of the Day: “The Martian Merman’s Ghost” by Ross Balcom, Frequent Contributor

The Martian Merman's Ghost

Ross Balcom

The ghost

of a Martian

merman speaks to the red

planet, as a sad child to its

mother:

"Cradle

me in your dry

seabed, let me recall

the joys I knew in oceans lost

in time."

Poet's Notes: A Martian, a merman, and a ghost, all rolled into one. You're welcome.

Poem of the Day: “Fault” by Mary Soon Lee, Frequent Contributor

Fault

Mary Soon Lee

Seventy-eight men--

     King Xau lay still,

     eyes closed.

Seventy-eight men.

Seventy-six of them farmers

or farmhands. Two soldiers.

     Xau lay still,

     trying not to disturb Khyert,

     once his stableboy,

     now valet, aide, groom,

     sleeping on a mat by the door.

Seventy-eight men.

Burnt. Stabbed. Mutilated.

To provoke Xau to war.

Seventy-eight deaths to start a war

that might kill tens of thousands.

     Xau's throat dry.

     He lay still.

     Forced himself to relax his muscles.

No good options.

To go to war in the bitter heart of winter,

try to maintain a supply line

despite snow and ice.

Or to stay put

as if nothing had happened,

perhaps persuade the other farmers to evacuate,

to follow their children to the towns.

Or to retaliate in kind:

to raid Donal's farms,

order his soldiers to burn Donal's farmers--

     Xau sat up.

     Reached for the water. Drank.

     Khyert stood, came over.

     "Can I get you anything?"

    

     "No. Thank you.

     Get some rest if you can."

No good options,

but he'd chosen anyhow.

Tomorrow he would lead his army

to the Muir river to take out the bridges--

     "It's not your fault."

     Khyert's voice quiet, diffident,

     worried about him,

     but all this was, in the end,

     Xau's fault.

Believing he could stop a war

that had continued,

overtly or surreptitiously,

for the past three hundred years--

     Khyert still standing there,

     watching him.

     

     "Try to rest," said Xau, again.

     But Khyert sat,

     cross-legged, by Xau's bed.

     Looked down at the floor.

     Sang, very soft,

     too quiet for the guards

     stationed outside the door to hear,

     a shepherd's song about the greening trees,

     the lambing ewes.

     Xau closed his eyes.

Poet's Notes:  This is part of The Sign of the Dragon, my epic fantasy in verse. It is one of several poems about the friendship between King Xau and Khyert, a friendship that began when Khyert was a stable boy and Xau was the youngest and least important of four princes. More poems from The Sign of the Dragon may be read at www.thesignofthedragon.com.

Poem of the Day: "barnacles" by Lauren McBride, Frequent Contributor

barnacles
solidly cemented
against changing tides

--Lauren McBride



Poet's Notes: I enjoy minimalist poetry, and in particular the hay(na)ku where a thought is expressed in only six words. Many of my poems are inspired by nature's beauty and especially the ocean.  Anyone who has ever scraped bare skin across a barnacle-encrusted rock knows that barnacles are "solidly cemented" and the skin will suffer.

A Crossover Passover Poem by FC John C. Mannone

Preparation Day

John C. Mannone

The thirteen prepared a feast in the upper room.

A long wooden table, set as if for a wedding

rehearsal for the bridegroom and his beloved,

has olive bowls placed amid stacks of barley cakes

made from last fall’s harvest, and dried dates

& figs with their sweet syrup to drizzle on them.

A pot—of barley, peas and lentils,

and a few broad beans from the early spring crop

—dangled in the hearth; steamed over coals.

One disciple brought tilapia fresh from the lake;

fire-roasted the fish golden brown before laying them

on earthen trays next to clay pitchers of goat’s milk.

Bitter greens laced a ceramic appetizer dish

by the olive oil—infused with oregano & thyme,

as well as laurel, sumac and hyssop—to be sopped up

with a piece of matzoh He had given his friend,

the one who couldn’t stay for the rest of the meal

and would miss the breaking of unleavened bread

and grasp its meaning, but he had already seen

the miracles of the loaves & fishes years earlier

on the grassy fields of Capernaum.

Nor would he drink the fine wine

transformed, not unlike the water poured out

at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee.

…But there would be no lamb,

no lamb to be served at the table, for he went

to sell the Lamb to the priests

whom they would slaughter on the morrow.

Poet’s Notes: When I first wrote this poem in March 2013, it was right at Passover. I imagined what the meal was like on the day before the Passover meal—preparation day. I had some ideas and since I knew where this poem was going immediately (not a usual thing for me) I felt comfortable doing research (comfortable that it wouldn’t suppress my creativity) before completing the first draft on paper).

I was careful to include the symbols for Israel: figs, grapes (wine), olives. Also, I specifically mention tilapia, which is not an anachronism, but known as “Peter's fish.” It is available in fish markets all over the Holy Land and was likely one of the fish ubiquitous in the Sea of Galilee and what the fishermen-disciples often caught.

Editor's Note:  I have always appreciated the melding of the sister religions, Judaism and Christianity, that occurs on Pesach or Passover.  Jesus was a Jew, and the Last Supper was a traditional Passover seder.  The wine and the matzoh took on different meanings for the proto-Christians at that seder, but the essentials in both major religions are all there.

As the firstborn son of a firstborn son of a firstborn son of firstborn son who is the father of yet another firstborn son, I take the Fast of the Firstborn seriously.  So, sadly, I will not be able to enjoy any food today--preparation day--but happily I at least can enjoy the meal vicariously through John's beautiful poem.

Poem of the Day: “That Place” by Sierra July, Frequent Contributor

That Place

Sierra July

It’s the place where the barber

Gets his haircut

The place the dentist regrets

Gorging candy

The place where the dog earns

The bone and the steak

And has to walk you

At the end of the day

Where desires and dreams

Converge, all the same

Found at the bottom

Of a wishing well

Poet’s Note: This poem is based on crazy dreams and plays with the term “dream.” Something you aspire to do or be and the dreamy (or not so dreamy) places you visit in your sleep.