unlike the last March two years ago with heap of snow this mild March stirs hope ©Byung a. Fallgren

Aunt She was sick and nowhere to go, Mother said. So she came to us, her brother's home. Most of her days she sat in her room, looking out the door at us, little kids in our room looking at her thin face, with wry smile, for hugs were not allowed; only hello and blown kiss. Wearing her shame, like a thick, bruised skin, the possibility of spreading the disease to the loved ones, she wished her days were brief; she would wait for the day she could rest, beneath the snow of the backyard mound. After she had gone, Mother came down with the aunt's breath and fever; worried for us; blamed the aunt's gift that would bring the doom home; we all were wrapped in her shadow. To this day, we siblings have been free of the aunt's feverish breath; wish it would stay that way, like the days of the vanished wind. Aunt's ghost smiles like the olden days, when she could play with us kids. ©Byung A. Fallgren
Drifting Olivia Ward Bush-Bank And now sun is tinted splendor sank, The west was all aglow with crimson light; The bay seemed like a sheet of burnished gold, Its waters glistened with such radiant bright. At anchor lay the yachts with snow white sails, Outlined against the glowing, rose-hued sky, No ripple stirred the winter's calm repose Save when a tiny craft sped lightly by, Our boat was drifting slowly, gently round, To rest secure till evening shadows fell; No sound disturbed the stillness of the air, Saved the soft chiming of the vesper bell. Yes, drifting, drifting; and I thought that life, When nearing death, is like the sunset sky; And death is but the slow, sure drifting in To rest far more securely, by and by. Then let me drift along the bay of time, Till my last sun shall set in glowing light; Let me cast anchor where no shadow fall, Forever moored within heaven's harbor bright. Olivia Ward Bush-Bank was born on 2-27-1869, in Sang Harbor New York. A poet, short story writer, journalist, she was the author of Original Poems (Louis A. Basinet, 1899), and more. She died on 4-8-1944.
My three Haiku are published in this week's Weekly Avocet. Thank you, Charles, Vivian, and Valerie for taking the pieces. --Byung A.
My three haiku are published in The Weekly Avocet #536. Thank you, Charles, Vivian, and Valerie for taking the pieces.
Trees at Night Helen Johnson Slim Sentinels Stretching lacy arms About a slumbrous moon; Black quivering Silhouettes, Tremulous, Stenciled on the petal Of blue bell; Ink sputtered On a robin's breast; The jagged rent Of mountains Reflected in a Stilly sleeping lake; Fragile pinnacles Of fairy castles; Torn webs of shadows; And Printed 'gainst the sky-- The trembling beauty Of an urgent pine. Helen Johnson was a poet of the Harlem Renaissance movement.
Two Countries Naomi Shihab Nye--1952-- Skin remembers how long the years grow when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel of singleness, feather lost from the tail of a swirling onto a step, swept away by someone who never saw it was a feather. Skin ate, walked, slept by itself, knew how to raise a see-you-later hand. But skin felt it was never seen, never known as a land or the map, nose like a city, hip like a city, glaring down of the mosque and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope. Skin had a hope, that is what skin does. Heals over the scarred place, makes a road. Love means you breathe in two countries. And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass, deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own. Even now, when skin is not alone, it remembers being alone and thinks something larger that there are travelers, that people go places larger than themselves. Naomie Shihab Nye gives voice to her experience as an Arab-American through poem about her heritage and place that overflow with a humanitarian sprit.