Meadowedge
by B. S. Eliud Acrewe
I
In the beginning is the end, and as the end begins,
one comes upon a row of houses at the city’s end.
An open field, grand and vast, is covered in lush grass,
so green beneath the azure blue of sky’s extensive gas,
the nitrogen and oxygen, refracted by the Sun.
It is the same as it was when the journey had begun.
Here at the meadow’s edge, the World opens fresh and new,
upon the blades of grass, the tiny diamond drops of dew,
the crickets chirping, crystalline and clear across the grass,
a choir that acquires the ears of any who may pass.
In the beginning is the end, and as the dawn goes on,
across the open field, leaving lovely lane and lawn,
one comes upon another realm beyond the deep red rose,
to long rock walls, and cement slabs, some scattered boulder flows.
This is the only gray within the giant bowl of green
surrounded by a line of trees along the skyline seen.
And there above the trees, like as some alien ship sent,
a giant water tower sits, high as a monument,
a cross between a classic dome on pillars standing tall,
or giant spider, concrete, reinforced, in steel sprawl.
II
What is coronavirus doing, vexing spring with plague;
the creatures of the meadow unconcerned on wing or leg.
The rabbit leaps across the flowing water in the ditch
that slowly trickles there beneath the rusty red-brown bridge.
A pair of ducks sits midst a puddle on a concrete slab,
a pair of killdeer tries distracting one who does not gab.
The swallows dive about the field, oblivious to stars,
the morning Sun, but one among the constellated wars.
Its blasting penetrates this stage, the crickets chattering,
converting hydrogen to helium, mass shattering.
The hoped for calm, the longed for balm, the pleasing hebetude—
Have we deceived ourselves again, with peaceful quietude?
Since every moment is a new and shocking vision to
reality, we must be willing to exchange each view.
The past is but experience the dead had come to know,
the wisdom of the ages in the pages of the old.
The rose bush at the wooden fence, the honeysuckle swells,
the scarlet harlot in the garden, the perfumed purple spells:
Though it seem not to be, the houses will not stay in place.
Don’t let enchantment keep one from humility and grace.
III
It isn’t much at the beginning, hardly anything,
some mild, slanting slopes, a narrow dale skinnying.
It’s not a place for gods. They do not frequent its rough trough;
and at its low and mean surroundings, they would rather scoff.
But in the end this is where some have come to pause and think,
where slowly what is not a creek begins to start and sink.
Here at the rusty bridge one sees a pond where frogs abide,
the tall and thin green reeds, pink evening primrose at its side,
as well as golden orange-yellow desert chicory,
each like a little living sun in windy flickering.
The distant goal so far away, is not infinity,
but hard to comprehend, like as the God of Trinity.
It measures time, not as we do, its canvas, greater space;
it slowly swells beyond the Gardens of this parklike place.
The morning doves don’t lie awake at night; at light they coo,
perduring time, not calculating any future view.
They sleep before their morning watch; there is no past for them;
they’re motivated by their instincts; their main stratagem.
Meandering, the creek bed, only tri-ckl-ing at most,
the raging drainage of the deluge, vanished like a ghost.
IV
One walks along, alone, and leaves the oak leaves on the trees,
the hoped-for health, the absence of the hated, late disease,
reminding us of Adam’s curse, as we proceed beyond
the roses and euonymus, the wakening at dawn.
Across the meadow’s length, the stridulating, crickets chirp,
the gossip, grand, mechanical, a whirling, swirling whirr,
accentuated only by the swallows overhead,
or rushing winds across the massive, grassy area,
like as some futuristic ruined Circus Maximus.
And though we may now call this Monday good, it taxes us.
V
So here one finds oneself beside the huge arena bowl,
the cricket match, a crowd of insects rattling en el Sol.
The distant elevated storage tank, high in the sky,
and gleaming white, reminds one that the urban sprawl is nigh.
Each venture is a new beginning to another end,
and each conclusion is a start to one more re-ascend.
Dawn takes one’s breath away. One breathes the fragrant, fresh air in.
Ah, grass, or straw, the air is redolent with each rich wind.
If not propitious, then at least one makes the great attempt,
here at this empty, brimming place with nature’s full assent.
Computers utter news of the new novel plague’s success,
but here one is each step removed from that and its duress.
The strangeness of the World and its many calls and cars
is far from here and morning’s daily masking of the stars.
Not merely is a lifetime not enough to comprehend,
it isn’t long enough to find assurance at the end.
When here and now both cease to matter, and all energy
is dissipated from these words and their vain venery,
how then shall old men be explorers of this endless climb
to the sub-lime and hoar-frost rime that comes to all in time?
B. S. Eliud Acrewe is a poet of Eliotic visions.
~~~
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
The infant gazes
at the ceiling fan with lights.
Both turned on amaze.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
On a window sill,
a cat closely observes a
man mowing his lawn.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet combining tradition Japanese haiku standards with Modernist and PostModernist techniques, following on the work of writers, such as Nakamura Kusatao (1901-1983), Kaneko Tôta (1919-2018), Nagata Kôi (1900-1997), Nakamura Sonoko (1911-2001), and Akao Tôshi (1925-1981).
~~~
Jurassic Age
by Urasic Bedewel
Jurassic age—150,000,000 years ago—
characterized by wet, warm climate’s ever changing show,
gave rise to a lush vegetation and abundant life,
landmasses crumbling, new seas forming, with which all were rife.
On land the conifers emerged, fern forests and cycads;
in seas came blood-red plankton, sharks, and monsters—there were
scads.
Amidst the birds and rodents, novel dinosaurs appeared,
like stegosaurs and allosaurs, and huge brachiosaurs.
Pangaea’s supercontinent continued breaking up,
Laurasia, too, into Eurasia-North America.
Gondwana also started its enormous fracturing,
indeed, ah, India, Australia and Antarctica.
Urasic Bedewel is a poet of the Mesozoic period.
~~~
Edmund Hillary
by Eric Awl De Beus
He was the first to reach the topmost point of Earth—
Mount Everest in th’ Himalayan Mountain Range—
New Zealander and climber Edmund Hillary,
along with Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay.
He’d practiced on much lower peaks, such as Mount Cook,
before he stood upon that height. Just that would change
his life. He suddenly discovered he was cool
for his persistence—Whoop-de-doo—What’s the big deal?
Somehow the dude had managed to pull up his bulk
down from the bottom of the World—feet, toes and heels,
legs, butt, back, abs, arms, chest, delts, neck, head—thoroughly—
up to the World’s top—So what?—The guy had zeal.
Eric Awl De Beus is a poet of New Zealand. Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) was a New Zealand mountain climber.
~~~
At Wonnapha Beach, Bang Saen
by Daw Buricselee
It is an evening view—Wonnapha Beach, Bang Saen, Chonburi, Thailand—
peach, pink, roseate
and mauve, cloud streamers stretching cross the heavens. Graham
Lawrence has caught the
peaceful beauty there beyond two palms. The Bangkok Bight rolls off
into the distant light, as
ripples from it undulate like gentle alms. Some figures wade, two others
stand together right at
th’ edge of wetness, talking possibly, or not. Upon the sand, a dog-sized
animal delights in
sniffing in the sand. Other souls lost in thought stand near, or sit, on
lounging chairs. This scene
in sense is cast. It will not last, but hasn’t been forgotten quite yet.
Daw Buricselee is a poet of Thailand. Chonburi, Thailand, has a population of around 180,000. Graham Lawrence is a contemporary photographer.
~~~
Newsreel:
Ambassador Lu Shaye was lambasted for his spin;
the Baltics blasted China—damn right, they are sovereign.
The Baltic NATO nations include Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
~~~
Ballode
by Aedile Cwerbus
Remember to preserve an even mind in suffering,
as well as one restrained in joyous, buffered renderings;
since though, like Dellius before the fight we may switch sides
at Actium, t’ Octavian, we still will live and die,
so dwelling in mean misery some of one’s gifted days,
or occupying festive times, on grassy lea displays,
aft Philippi has run its course, as Horace may have done,
we lay down oral lays, perhaps, with our Falernian.
Why do the towering pines and pale poplars merge to make
congenial and amiable overbranching shade?
Why do the bright, clear, rushing waters, trem-bl-ing in haste,
race down the winding river-course, impressing T. E. Page.
Bring forth sweet teas and unguents, as well as the brief rose,
whose lovely blossoms flower in the garden where it grows,
while things and time permit, while Clotho and Lachesis spin
and measure clothes, before life’s close, and Atropos cuts in.
We will cede purchased seeded woodlands; we will leave our homes,
the village too beyond the Tiber and the realms of Rome.
They will be left, and others will take these possessions up,
as riches piled high into eternal depths will drop.
It doesn’t matter if one lingers under open skies
our ghosts will all leave Argos, wealthy, foolish, poor, or wise.
We all are victors come to life beneath the glaring Sun,
whether we praise His rays or cuss out Orcus ere we’re done.
We all are forced to the same goal; we’ll all share the same urn.
We will embark upon the ark into the taciturn,
exiled to eternity, like banished Ovid was
to Tomis, now Constanţa, everlasting, our last stop.
Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of Ancient Rome. Quintus Delius (2nd half of 1st century BC) was a Roman commander and politician. Gaius Octavian (63 BC – 14 AD) was the first Roman emperor. Horace (65 BC – 8 BC) and Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD) were Ancient Roman poets. Thomas Ethelbert Page (1850-1936) was a British Classicist. Constanţa is a city in Romania of around 300,000.
~~~
A Backward Look
by Urbawel Cidese
The pair were new acquaintances, there at an auto stop.
She was a euro gypsy, he a man lost in his thoughts.
He looked down to the gray cement, she gazed upon the trees
and building scattered all about the city’s scenery.
It was a chance to eat a bit, to pause and catch one’s breath,
to be free from the rue of avenue and coming threat.
The river waters rippled past beneath the sky’s azure,
filled up with clouds both gray and white o’er architectured mure.
They had been riding on the train, short hours from Heilbronn.
I saw them sitting on the Seine, down stream from Notre Dame.
Urbawel Cidese is a poet of urban spaces. Heilbronn, Germany is a city of around 125,000, Paris, France, around 2,100,000.
~~~
Flashback:
Jay Ward and Alex Anderson created them from scratch,
the moose, Bullwinkle, and the squirrel, Rocky Jay, dispatched,
from Frostbite Falls, in Minnesota, 1959,
two animated characters who joked about the time.
Jay Ward (1920-1989) and Alex Anderson (1920-2010) were PostModernist American animators.
~~~
The Purple Poppy Mallow Plant
by Brac Lei Uweeds
How beautiful it looks, the purple poppy mallow plant,
red violet and pretty, perky, in its roadside haunt.
Cup-shaped and showy in its blowing forth and back unsmudged,
magenta majesty on trailing deep-lobed fo-li-age.
Wine chalices at Eastertime filled to the brim with air,
so wonderful before the eyes beneath Sun’s glaring stare,
foot-high and hosting brightly painted, yellow butterflies,
beneath fun-limited, illuminated azure skies.
Brac Lei Uweeds is a poet of flowers.
~~~
Flash Forward:
Expanding on historic images of a black hole,
some scientists unveiled a new picture from that shoal,
there at the center of M87 galaxy,
a grand colossal jet of particle high-energy,
the savag’ry unfolding round that cavernous event
so ravenous, behemoth, frenzied, ultra-violent,
a supermassive structure photgraphed in sucking girth,
from over fifty-million light-years here on spinning Earth.
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