Now, Gina comes to us from Australia. She is known as Emerald13 on Allpoetry.com.

She can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Emerald13

I have a photo of you taken in mountains somewhere

~

you, snowflakebearded, you 

smile there forever 

in stainless steel light  

beneath an impossibly-blue sky 

your eyes follow me  

and I move just off-frame  

hoping you will step 

out of the paper 

and kiss me, sometimes  

in this tranquil room, I wonder  

if a morning will come 

when I don't think about you  

and when absence inhabits  

me, becoming 

too much to bear you are turned 

in a handful of silence 

to face the crack in the wall   

Be sure to check her out. 

Kristoffer Rakow comes to us from Sweden, a Scandinavian country sandwiched between Norway and Finland.

He is known as Irial on Allpoetry.com and can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Irial#

A Silver Morning

A silver morning drenched in dew

We lay there on the grassy plains

Gazing up into the skies

The wild stars blazing

Intergalactic fury

We lay there to rest our bones

From the midnight hunt

Our way

To chase the apathy away

To seek our infinite dreams

Sweaty you turned around

To face me with your lips

By the gods you were beautiful

We were destiny

Children of the eternal wild

Your pale body moved like

A swaying field in the wind

Mesmerizing my very presence 

Harmonic lust combining our souls

Echoes of our love 

Engraved in the roof of the world

We shattered the world that night

What came after was a bleak image 

An illusion of trust

Machine-made-lust

Fading from our minds like dust

Set free to explore 

With spirits entwined 

And with no regrets 

We left this world 

To seek

An endless cascade of infinite dreams

Check him out.

Butterflywriter comes to us from Louisiana.

She's a bit shy, so we have no name, but ...

She can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/butterflywriter#

To Thine OWN Self Be True...

I have learned of having courage

in the past three years

courage to be me

to love who I love

say what I say

do what I do

and accept

that I

and what I

believe is not

for everyone, but

for the few that hear

my words and accept my love

it is the top of the mountain

the crest of the wave, the fire in

my writing, and the peace in my soul.

Check her out.

Now, Ruth Kephart comes to us from Pennsylvania, USA.

Ruth can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/RuthKephart

Be sure to check out her book, For Everything There Is A Season, ISBN # 1-4241-4513-9 published 7/2006. 

It is available at barnesandnoble.com http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=1424145139&pdf=y , amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Everything-There-Season-Ruth-Kephart/dp/1424145139/ref=sr_11_1/103- , 

and can also be ordered at any bookstore nationwide

And now, here’s Ruth:

My Mother's Quilt

A worn quilt rests upon my favorite chair
Each stitch a faded memory it seems
Of days when I would watch my mother there
With quilting frame and scraps of blues and creams

She’d sew for hours on hours every day
Creating quilts for family and for friends
With time and love she seamed without delay
A throw of all her little odds and ends

Dear mother has been gone now twenty years
And I have aged with children of my own
Though death is one step closer, I’ve no fears
Of dying, loss, or simply the unknown

I hope to see my mother, soon, once more
And know, in heaven, that she waits for me
With quilting frame and cotton scraps galore
Darning her quilts for all eternity

Valerie Ceres comes to us from Manchester in the UK. Her screenname on Allpoetry.com is Elfin,

and she can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Elfin

And now, to the poem:

Scottish Springtime

Betwixt windswept moor and meadow

‘neath a vast and changing sky,

rise austere primeval mountains

where the golden eagles fly. 

From his shelter in a thicket

wanders forth a noble stag,

over viewing his wild kingdom

from a high and fearful crag.

Wind whips through the glens and valleys

rustles o’er the new sprung blades,

and it bites like spiny bramble

swift and keenly it pervades.

As the changing of the daylight

passes o’er the glassy loch

it reflects the rugged grandeur

of the cold grey glinting rock.

How these unforgiving Highlands

stir the souls of Celtic men,

as they gaze on savage mountain

or on sprouting vernal glen.

While the skirl of pipes entwine with

plaintive strains of ghostly lutes;

through archaic and ruined dwellings

spirits call me to my roots.

Be sure to check her out.

Next up: David Grace, from California, for a cheery Easter morning.

His screenname on Allpoetry.com is Roaddog Wolf, and he can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Roaddog%20Wolf

Those of you who rise early for Easter breakfast might appreciate this fine poem:

Reaching for the Breakfast Fork

Words are the syrup of writing's pancakes;
buttered syrup is the economy of words 
for writing waffles of eloquent qualities,
and expressive brevity.

Battered butter syrup instant waffle mix
are the non-existent written words of elloquence;
the expressive quality readers want for breakfast
and everyone looks for a chef to create.

Life is the abode of culinary arts 
the art of writing is life's culinary kitchen 
of creative inventions and breakfast pancakes.
Molasses anyone?

Come check him out.

For Easter, we have Rupert Brooke, with an inimitable and matchless ...

poem, and sadly, the only for which he is remembered today:

V. The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

On April 4, 1915, Dean Inge of St. Paul's Cathedral read a sonnet from the pulpit as part of his Easter Sunday sermon. The sermon was published in The Times the next day, and the sonnet therein became, as George Parfitt describes, "an important document of national preparation for war." Originally entitled 'The Recruit', Rupert Brooke's sonnet 'The Soldier' was the last in a sonnet sequence entitled '1914'. The five numbered sonnets, preceded by an unnumbered sonnet were first published in the periodical New Numbers (number 4) in January of 1915:

The Treasure, I. Peace, II. Safety, III. The Dead, IV. The Dead, V. The Soldier

Today we have Serge Charles Frechette from Canada.

He is known as capricornpoet on Allpoetry.com.  He can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/capricornpoet

This is the link to his book reference, "Poems For All Seasons":

www.redleadbooks.com/

Now, on to his beautiful poem:

A Painter's Weave

Phtalo blue he brushed before all eyes;

And the sky appeared flawless and still

Soft yellow on the horizon, a sun's hue,

touched by cadmium white breath strokes,

over prussian blues and alizarins

Mingle of yellows and ochres, greens and vandyke brown,

giant fir trees and misty forests on mountains;

and the earth was filled onto the canvas;

there flowed prussian blue water and 

liquid white contours, the pond quiet now;

The painter's dream and weave done....

Check him out.

Now, from Australia, comes Ron Wiseman, with wisdom

for us today, about life and growing old.   Known as Lyndon on Allpoetry.com,  he can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Lyndon

A winter god

 

I look to one side of the living room and see a jungle of treeferns dripping with mist.
On the other, I see fogs curl along valleys far below, slow as glaciers.
A pale moon hangs among clouds, points to the western sun.

I have just showered and it’s winter outside, Australian winter, cool
and bleak but I am warm in front of a log fire pouring carbon footprints
one by one into the still air above, mounting to the stratosphere or

somewhere near it, and so I ponder forgetting I look like a sculpture
of David, if somewhat flabby and old, still completely male,
a flushed image of God, in our little cottage mounted upon a cliff-face

in defiance of gravity, winter, the whole of creation including the stars,
all dimensions of everything undiscovered as yet and, for a nanosecond,
I am a god, powerful, invulnerable and then I wake up, wide-eyed to

hear my wife say, “Are you all right, dear?”
I am as strong as I can hope to be and hide nakedness
not out of prudery; more, a sense of disappointment

 

emanating from a hallway mirror, reflecting whey milk of sunshine

left dissected, a heart rendered unsure, and a black cloud

hovering over coastal hills, sullen and unmoving. 

Check him out.

Wanda Lea Brayton makes her appearance, from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA,

too deeply rooted to be blown away by any hurricanes or dust storms.

She can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Night%20Hope

or here:

www.myspace.com/105007070

Within the Glistening

I have been wounded

& warped

by words falling errant

upon the page,

yet, healed by quiet murmurs,

the gentle rustle

of hands reaching out for me

in silence.

I have danced

beyond dawn's coming gleam,

unable to lay down my pen

& sleep,

taut with fiery imagination.

I have wished for moment's return

when I couldn't clarify my clouded emotions

& regretted the steel trap's closing

when I lashed out in anger.

I have whispered tender endearments

under moonlight's caress

 

& wept beyond reparation

when the world seemed too far away

to hold me.

I have been a Poet

every instant of my life,

even when language fails...

All visitors welcome.  Check her out.

Rob Ganson, known as Just Rob on Allpoetry.com comes to us from Wisconsin, USA:

His inimitable writings can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Just%20Rob

A Stream flows from the Loon Lake of my mind

 

 

 

 

 

 

                              {For Pat Dinnen}

 

 

 

A stream flows from the loon lake of my mind:

 

It requires no particular place to flow,

no respect from the land it feeds,

no song of itself for ungrateful ears.

It cannot be damned by merchant

or scoundrel, by grasping claws

of those who cannot inherit

the magic of the moon, the clarity,

the wisdom of water tumbling

over the smooth stone of time.

 

 

The paintings I sing,

the vistas of poetry I paint,

the story that tells me, line the banks

like wildflowers that usurp a neglected park.

All seasons reside along this rhythmic

ribbon of thought, This Stream

of consciousness.

 

 

If you listen, you can hear your spirit

sing like my loon, my coyote, my

laughter and tears.

There is a bend on this chromium path,

where sunrise kisses each mourning

with a hopeful mouth, hungry for you,

where a forever stone creates an eddy

that defines peace with silent song.

 

 

Can you hear the ripples, from the stone

I have tossed for you?

This is the place light goes to play

with water  and time is not.

 

 

This morning, I built you a bench there.

It is not an ordinary bench.

It will take you to your own stream,

lift you from unwanted time, place, and company.

 

 

This bench can fly.

Rob is an amazing writer.   Check him out.

Ryan comes to us from New York ...

writing in his own inimitable way, bringing us something to ponder today.

A Veil

Heavy feet assist muck

Drowning heels, which once

spread haste across Rock Glade

And drank from bathwater

tepid, of course, a preference

Sight becomes sunset

Dropping past etchings

of many artists' depictions

Giving me double-visions

even now, in remembrance

Extending appendages

to grasp sanded mug

Which holds the elements required

by both oceans and thirsts

Becomes my weakest attempt

Last words, true to form

Are still written, 

If not on pages, at least branded

into the outsetting walls

of my mind

Go check him out.