The Question

     by Judy Maher

She wonders if she slipped unstrung
into a rock-bottom stream under aspens
would she trouble herself to get up
or let the water flow her
like icy earth blood?

Or if she overdosed on bitter pills,
then wavered among visions and revisions,
would she call 911—
Help me, I’m failing and not getting up,
afloat on feathers of everafter
and what could be better?
Truth is, her body would decide.
It would thrash and retch,
comb its hair, change its clothes,
wander off in search
of chocolate, a Springsteen song,
orgasm, a mountaintop.
Truth is, her puny self
is lashed aboard an animal.
Tooth, nerve, tissue—
the living stuff of her—
ramble her days without her consent.
Oxygen and appetite are in charge.
Yet who can say she does not know
that where her body goes
is where she wants to go?
She wonders how she can bless
this relentless bone-beast which,
even warped and wrinkled, snuffles
with lolling tongue and ardent eyes
over the brink of moment, then
moment, then tomorrow,
until at last it too is done, undone,
and lays her down with a whisper,
Now I say enough, now I say we rest. enough, I say . . .
Now rest.

Doorway

     by Dick Strong

In order for a doorway
to fulfill it's function,
you must pass through it.

The doorway is always there.
You are either on one side
or the other.

Either passing through
or returning, it doesn't
make much difference

to the door.

When Walt Was Walt and Then Some

     by Gus Gustafson

In his upward years the Good
Gray Poet had visitors who spoke
from the heart about how
Walt embraced all as if all struck
blessed chords in his open nature.

The good gray one could be
taken aback by such praise,
saying his nature contained
evasions and secrets that he himself
could hardly hold out to the gaze
of a stranger, even an allay.

One day, with one such supporter,
one from England no less, Walt
likened his way at least at times,
to a hen walking along a hedgerow
as if unconcerned with any ambition
beyond a grain to snap up
and swallow, but then of a sudden
darting into a cleft in the hedge
that caught her eye. There she laid
her surprise, hiding it smoothly,
and trotting on letting nature take
the next steps on its fateful journey.