Do Cats Meditate?
Chris Smith
Again you’re there
Upon my chair
Distant in your mind
With content purr
You do not Stir
Righteous and Divined
Where do you go
I just don’t know
Only can I surmise
Your natural flow
With breathing slow
The distance in your eyes
Is your elevation
A Feline meditation
Of ancients you connect
For the great preservation
Of a whole human nation
Entrusting that you protect
*****
Honey
Gabrielle Blair
On cue Honey waits beside the door
eager to trace the same old route
for the hundredth time or more
as though it were the first.
Panting to meet the new day
he strains at his leash,
smells the air,
nostrils quivering in the morning mist.
The street is still asleep.
She is heavy-hearted, cloaked in melancholy:
wars, inflation, fear of a new virus –
always this insidious fear
she never used to feel.
Honey pauses, sniffs his favorite tree,
cocks a leg,
then satisfied that all is well,
leads on.
Be in the now! she scolds herself.
Be more like Honey, the eternal optimist!
Assured the sun is up, the street is his,
he is alive and that’s enough …
and that’s enough, she whispers with a smile …
and that’s enough.
*****
Little Death In The Morning
Susa Silvermarie
Kiskadees calling,
lake waves falling onto shore.
Distant voices,
the bark of a dog.
Suddenly I am vanished
into the sounds all around.
My slide into everything,
my little death,
feels easy as pie, and I find
I never needed
to be separate,
after all.
*****
No Accounting
Lillie Mae Henley
There is no tally
for the past.
It comes and goes.
Flits through our head
in brief images,
leaving us with a feeling
not consonant with today.
There is no balance
with the past.
It has the upper hand.
Impels the now with
lies of yesteryear,
giving us momentary
pause of doubt or elation.
Serenity wins
every entry.
It surrounds us with
peace, light, joy,
presenting the Now
in the fullness
of our time.
*****
Sea King
John Sacelli
What is the sea king seeking?
With this crew of dream dancers, sailors – sail
or die – blown by the winding winds of chance? a
masculine urge of separation and individuation yearning to
cross the vast universal ocean of the feminine. Across
the seas, la mer, these mariners of fate. What do they
want? A new land? A New Age? A new
destiny? Knowledge? Love? Justice?
Truth? What drives us to leave what we know
– to cross from scavengers to hunter-gatherers,
to farmers, merchants, from use of the sticks and stones of
fate to forgers of our own tools, weapons, techniques and
technologies, from the forests to towns and cities, from the
land to the sea, the earth to sky, the physical to the
metaphysical, trance-dancing through the trans-dimensional?
Whatever it is, we feel it now.
Yet how it is different is still not
quite clear. We summon ourselves to service beyond
ourselves. We examine. We train. We plan.
We wait. Ice is melting, harbors clearing.
Soon, soon, we will set out.
seeking to be the sea king
*****
Slowing Down
Mel Goldberg
I rode the rapids on the wild Gauley
and shot the class six falls on New River.
I hiked a trail to old Tintern Abbey,
swam cold lakes that would make penguins shiver.
I dived the Blue Hole off Belizan coast
and saw pink dolphins in the Mariñon.
I ate Maori deep pit hangi roast
climbed Wayna Picchu while others looked on.
These were the past, the wildest of my years
but time has slowed me to have different dreams.
I never was one to give in to fears,
but now I seek milder events, it seems.
Yet I will strive until my final breath
and sail into that last adventure, death
*****
Suddenly
Robert D. Lopez
Suddenly from somewhere
She appears in my thoughts
A beautiful person
Whose eyes I have caught
She moves with finesse
Exquisite, such grace
Her smile a Mona Lisa
Such a beautiful face
I see her a flower, a bird on a tree,
Exposing such strength, the roar of the sea
She sits on her rock, analyzing the stars
Tracing constellations from Venus to Mars
She is sensual, perceptive, sexy and bright
Can light up the dark
My God, what a sight.
*****
Trafficking In Life
John Thomas Dodds
Just when I thought I had finally settled down
a spiked basketball, ten thousand times smaller
than a drop of sweat, began chomping on my cells—
termites, nibbling away at my rocking chair.
On a foundation of sand the road ahead,
sans yellow line to keep me in the right lane,
lacked mile markers, with no way to know
if I was on a pathway to heaven or hell.
As clouds forming unfamiliar faces surfaced
ominously out of clear blue sky, it was enough
to take out the umbrella and sunglasses waiting
helplessly for a cloudburst or sunburst, all the while
forgoing a “past due date,” on a grandfather clock
in a hallway of dawn and dusk relegated in time
to a postscript, lingering in a listless lockdown,
and buried in a comfort zone of lost days.
Slowing down, and pulling over on quarter tank,
was enough to idle precaution, and muse plans
of moving on down the road like a fat cat chasing
butterflies, never leaving the rocking chair.
Having learned how to handle, out of sight, whatever
wherever the road leads one; travelling in a free zone
of my own making, at the heart of it, under a garden
of weeds and weathered wood, burrows destiny.
Just when I thought forever was a never ending
poem about being here for one reason, and only one,
turns out it’s a solitary journey about being who I am,
aging quietly, trafficking in life, waiting until the road ends.
After he retired and moved to Sedona, Arizona, he taught literature at Yavapai College in Clarkdale, Arizona.
He and professional artist Bev Kephart bought a small motor home in 2003, sold most of their possessions, and traveled the U. S. for seven years. After visiting Mexico several times, they settled in the village of Ajijic, joining the ex-pat artist and writing communities.
Mel’s writing has been published online and in print in The United Kingdom, The United States, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia. He is the author of three novels, a book of short stories, and several books of poetry. He and his wife now make their home in the village of San Nicholas de Ibarra.
- Poetry Niche – January 2025 - December 26, 2024
- Poetry Niche – December 2024 - November 30, 2024
- Poetry Niche – November 2024 - October 31, 2024
