Time Warp
Scáth
by Patrick Hayes
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
--Chief Crowfoot of the Canadian Blackfeet
The heat of day recedes, the clouds grow grey,
Red Sun to travel soon again beneath
The world, and fight its way to Dawn once more
Against the demons with their hateful breath,
But we above will watch the growing dark,
Retreat into our homes to light our fire,
Our lamp against the shadows on the wall,
The lurking ghosts repelled by lute and lyre.
Since ever Man arose from out his plains
And drew the flame and stone to his command,
We fight the night, we war against its birth,
We shield the cave with works of fearful hand,
To keep at bay the haunting cry of prey,
The silent menace of the hunting beast.
We huddle in our corners, and we hope
Our candles stay alight so we could rest.
But I have always felt a kinship there,
Beyond the safety of warm lighted sleep;
I feel alive at Midnight, and at Dawn
I often mourn the daybreak, and I weep.
I'm neither light nor dark, but something else
That shuffles softly here between the hours
When daytime falls and moonlight comes to reign,
Who seeks the even hidden with its powers:
For sadness has a beauty of its own
And sorrow beats the depths with lovely strains,
While here above our joy comes loud and brash.
I listen for the quiet dark again.
And twilight holds a magic in its mien,
That all our garish daylight cannot pierce,
For when the stars come out my eyes draw up,
To gather in the dimness, soft yet fierce,
Like ages past when lonely men strode out
And gazed into the endless stark abyss;
I feel then life is sweet, moreso than now
As noontide brings its wrathful, burning kiss,
And I must hide, for fear of being marked
As one not of the Day, but Night's own slave,
Or Master--I know not, but I know this:
That I was born of Morning, yet I crave
The end of day and twilight's risen gloom,
To feel the sunless winds upon my face,
And walk the sleeping world in lazy peace,
For in the dark I know I've found my place.
Birthday
another year
of dishes, laundry, carpool
summer and winter
fall and spring
snow, rain, sunshine
early mornings
sleep-ins
all-nighters
early nights
growing hair
cutting it
growing, cutting
growing, cutting
fine lines
deep furrows
a little more tummy
a lot more grey
pulling you close
pushing you away
and photos--
to prove it all
true
my truth
my year
Moss
by Shannon Brewer
In my memory, my son running through the tall reeds
Is like a deer, or maybe an antelope--
An animal anyway,
So deceptively graceful in the grass
You know that it must be his home.
I wish that we had stopped beside the lake a bit longer that day
To watch the tadpoles sprouting from the water
surprising us with their small splashes,
the brave fish sprinkling our faces with their
tails flapping against the stream.
My son running through the tall reeds
Against the water's edge
Pushed onward into the forest
Beneath the sycamores scaling the roof
With their burly heads,
Beneath the bluebirds' and the robins' nests,
Beneath even the brown moth landed softly against the fern.
What are you looking for, I asked him, a willing follower.
Something gentle, he replied,
And then reached down to stroke with slender fingers
A carpet of moss.
Even
by Elizabeth Wawrzyniak
I have collected your fading photographs,
Silver celluloid proof of years passing,
Held them to the light and searched
For any sign of me.
And I have found myself in all of them.
Even the aunt who sat alone at the table,
Reading Dickinson and Plath together,
Mixing them into one for a stronger
Brew of melancholy,
And dreamt of bees instead of children.
Even a great-great-great grandmother,
Who wandered fields of tall yellow corn
In her white linen dress and army boots
And picked at stalks,
Guiding growth with thick leather gloves.
Even the grandfather who ran away to sea,
Escaping an overbearing father, a frigid home,
And finding with children of his own,
Some twenty years later,
His father's face staring back from the mirror.
Even my own mother, full of fear and dreams,
Who looks backward and forward all at once,
Searching for a safer middle ground,
Proverbial middle child,
Seeking to fulfill hopes and wishes not her own.
I am all of you together, generations past;
Pieces falling through cracks,
Slowly pushing upwards
Blood running true
I am all of you together, all at once together.
Knowing this, I scour photographs closer,
Not looking back but forward
And hope myself repeated,
Piece by piece,
In the generations that are waiting.