Lament
Rainer Maria Rike

Oh! All things are long and far.
A light is shining but the distant star
From which it still comes to me has been dead
A thousand years...in the dim phantom boat
That glided past some ghastly thing was said.
A clock just struck within some house remote
Which house? --I long to still my beating heart.
Beneath the sky's vast dome I long to pray...
Of all the stars there must be far away
A single star which exists apart.
And I believe that I should know the one
Which has alone endured and which alone
Like white city that all space commands 
At the ray's end in the high heaven stands.


Rainer Maria Rika was born on December 4, 1875,
in Prague. He authored numerous works in prose and
poetry. He died on December 29, 1926. 

On the Same Hill

We pursue
The same dream,
Complying with the laws,
Purple and yellow
On the same Hill.

I remember 
How I got here,
Just as others do;
Some are here by the wind;
Desperate waves,
Baffling the concerned.

We avoid 
Making more tears;
Find the right solution,
To put everything
In order and 
Embracing all.

This first appeared in Talking River Review, 
Issue 48, Spring 2020.

©Byung A. Fallgren

Untitled
Lance Henson

Here is a place where nothing can die
Darkness that lives beneath the leaves

We bring our nights there without knowing
We bring our fear there before the signing begins
We bring our silent names there hoping we are forgiven

We bring our hands there scented of a river
We bring our prayers that hide and watch us
The landscape where we have held the loose feathers
Of a fallen bird

And awakened in the land of the unseen
Herse in the place where nothing can die... 

Lance Henson is a poet, teacher, and cultural activist. 
 A member of the Cheyenne Nation of Oklahoma, Henson 
has authored numerous poetry collections, he lives in 
Bologna Italy. 

As if some little Artic Flower
Emily Dickinson

As if some little artic flower
Upon the polar hem,
Went wandering down the latitudes,
Until it puzzled came
To continent of summer.
To firmament of sun
To strange, bright crowns of flowers,
And birds of foreign tongue!
I say, as if this little flower
To Eden wandered in–
What then? Why, nothing, only,
Your inference therefrom!

Emily Dickson was born on December 10, 1830, in
Massachusets. Her first poetry was published posthumously
in 1890.

Four Haiku

leaves under the snow
wait for the snow to melt away
falling is not fun

a skidding leaf
after the street sweeper
some others follow

snow day silence
no creatures stirring
only a bunny hops

blacktop road
glistens with melting snow
mirrored sky

©Byung A. Fallgren