Bayern Sud

by David W. Landrum

The Monastery of the Hawks, where monks
who looked like tankards brewed their fine black beer,
set on a mountainside to keep away
invaders, women, and the motley crew
of non-religious, lingers in my mind
not for the ages-old stone walls built up
to shield the cenobites, nor the baroque
chapel, not the shrines and not even
the Doppelbock that helped them fast away
long holy days, dark as the light down in
the cellars where they stored it in huge casks
six-hundred years in use, soaked with the dross
of brewings kept two-hundred-thousand days —
rather, the patchwork I could see from there:
the squares of ripened barley, tawny; fields
of purple bean-leaf, green rapunzel-plant;
a quilt of autumnal variety,
that rolled out to the distant Alps. One road
stretched through it all, past farms with gardens where
old kerchiefed women spread manure and where
wood crucifixes (Jesus, white as snow,
his head bowed sadly down) dotted the roads,
commemorating accidents, sad spots
where people died amid the silent pines.

Album

by Alison Brackenbury

Oh where did it come from, that web of sound
But the glimmer of grass, the red hair shaken down,
Oh where did it go to, that sweep of the strings
But a hand swinging free, as a swallow tests wings?
What rose between the light and air
What drew us, then thrust us apart?
A child, who stared at the empty chair,
A girl, with a hole through her heart.

Sauntering

by Ralph La Rosa

“I have traveled far in Concord.“
— H. D. Thoreau

Come and walk this path with me,
wherever it may lead — it’s fall,
my favorite time for pilgrimage.
Attune your senses. And if you dare,
leave thought behind, for I have traveled
westward paths before and know
that instinct makes the most of them.
You’re ready? It’s a trying walk,
but sanative for those sans terre,
who wander through uncharted woods
and wasted lands. You walkers-errant,
come! Let’s shoulder through this hedge.
Perhaps we’ll see a holy land,
find the way a la Sainte Terre,
where once, despite constraining creeds,
I strolled into a primal grove,
the only source of Saunterer’s Apples,
and lost myself amidst the trees
until I found the wind-fall fruit —
hallowed by its tang, my tongue
and lips were freed to sing of it.

Santa Fe Trail, Kansas

by Chris O’Carroll

The Conestoga wagon wheels that rolled
Through here more than a century ago
Left scars still visible, so I’ve been told,
Ruts I might make out if I squint just so.
Peering at prairie grass, I fail to find
The tracks laid down when history passed this way.
What if those marks are figments (like that line
In Casablanca Bogart doesn’t say),
Ghost imprints on collective memory,
Where folklore’s legend-laden wagon train
Detours or shortcuts past reality
While an imagined soundtrack plays again?
    Yet a nearby ground-nesting meadowlark,
    Unseen, is trilling notes that bid me mark.

Do Not Go East

by Philip Quinlan

Do not go East: satori is at hand.
In shifting shells, in sea shelves seeing is
believing: more than all beliefs unshelved.

Do not go up: here heaven has a hold.
Air there is thin, too thin for breathing in,
and yet there is a rapture in the deep

beneath the light: green, dark and wonderful.
And dark is where the dreams are; past things, too:
the place we see ourselves unselved,

and find an ocean, opiate enough
to drown all doubt. Go down, then, if you will,
and sink into intoxicated sleep.

Shells shift and speak tomorrow and afar.
Tomorrow is the place where rumours are.

Just Once

by Alan Gould

For twenty years an instant will persist.
I’m back in London, high in London mist,
and from the bus glimpse someone draw aside
an upstairs curtain. She is, I see, a bride
who smiles upon the wet, inchoate street,
gives it the ah! it lacks to be complete.

The Living Lie

by Parker Tettleton

Don’t you go when you’ve gone;
in beds made of picture frames
the living lie with blank faces,
showing sunlight to the floor.

Don’t you lose what you’ve left —
the roads traveled many a time,
the haunts sitting side by side
or alone, as it may be.

Don’t you know if you’re known,
if one star sees another from afar,
if a beat of the heart is the breath
they breathe in the dark.

Straight Furrow

by Don Thackrey

I want to plow one furrow straight
Before my harvest time draws near.
There’s been a frost; the time is late;
The weather soon will turn severe.
I’ve practiced all my life to keep
The four-horse team and plow aimed true;
You’d think I’d do it in my sleep,
But errors happen, each one new.
It might be something in the ground,
Or, likelier, the outside horse
Will swing toward something tempting found
And throw us just a bit off course.
It’s time for me to concentrate
And leave a final furrow straight.

Migration

by John Van Doren

See there, look —
Bright, small
Upon the sidewalk,
A sign of fall —

That pretty goldfinch,
Flying high
Mistook a window
Reflecting sky.

This time of year
So many downed,
Meeting a heaven
Hard as ground.

Last Dance

by Janet Kenny

Old lovers promenade the beach,
bare feet, hands held, they pace the last
of what is theirs. No need for speech,
They walk united by their past.

They pass, united by the walk
of other pairs of lovers, some
still young, engaged in lovers’ talk,
not yet aware that love is dumb.

The tide goes out, the tide comes back,
as one and one and one retrace
their steps to hunt for what they lack
but never find. Their other face.

Broken quatrains of faltering feet
search for a time they cannot beat.

Rania’s Ambulance

by Dennis J.Bernstein

Rania rides shotgun in the Gaza Strip.
At thirty meters, she watches a sharp-shooter
cut down a stone-thrower with a single round.
The soldier’s bullet teaches the boy a lesson
his mother will never forget.

Over the Field

by Alison Brackenbury

Soft, flannelled tongues, new cowslips, sleep till spring.
Ragwort hides in wait, its snake’s eye glinting.

One daisy, the long lashes streaked with mud,
Rich grasses light October; oh what good

Can we bring this hot world? But celandine
Springs speckled like a frog. Green and more green

Of slim stems, low hedge-trees, crowd in my eyes.
I float in green’s cool water, Paradise

Glimpsed by a Chinese poet who would take
Rest with the Buddhists. Greens sank through their lake.

He planned safe storage for his final scrolls,
The monasteries. The great men burnt them all.

The small, whom he protected, starved; began
To hack the forests where the gibbons swung.

Is all said? Done? I have not truly seen
One leaf: dock, plaintain, speedwell, green on green.

The Pursuit

by Frank Osen

I’m mountain ranges from my home
And heat is dancing up the road
I can’t recall what made me leave,
Was it a burr, a bar, a goad?

A wandering scholar sang your praise,
Extolling stations on the way;
How steep the trail, I didn’t ask
How long the trek, he didn’t say.

Unnumbered times I’ve cursed that bard
And damned each dark, abandoned shrine,
Each woman who forbad a bed,
Each inn where they refused me wine.

Contesting for my forward foot
Distracted me from how I went;
Better I never noticed that
The path began a slow ascent.

Until, at last, I feel you near
Like some pursuing, taunting elf.
I hurry on, now, in a sweat
And keep my curses to myself.

Dangerous Liaison

by Anna Evans

The kissing couple stood on the hard shoulder,
not ten yards from the place marked by a cross
where someone else was killed. There’s nothing bolder
than lovers’ hubris — they can’t picture loss.

The rush-hour traffic seemed, as one, to brake,
arrested by their legs and arms entwined,
or by this knowledge: all their deaths would take
was one car passing on the inside, blind.

It was so fitting — lovers need the guts
to stand tall, stick their fingers up at fate,
even if the whole world thinks they’re nuts
and they’re still kissing when it’s far too late.

What fools they were! What fools all lovers are!
And how I wished to be them, from my car.

(This poem is in the current issue of The Chimaera.)