SONG

Sing to the sun
It will warm your words
Your joy will rise
Like the sun
And glow
Within you.

Sing to the moon
It will hear
And soothe your cares
Your fears will set
Like the moon
And fade
Within you.

EMERGENCE

Before we came out of the lake,
  we did not know illness.
Before we came out of the lake,
  we did not know death.
Before we came out of the lake,
  we did not know evil.
We needed our emergence
  to accept them.

The Walrus

The pounding spatter
Of salty sea
Makes the walrus
Walrusty

INVITATION TO THE WIND

Dance
with me
now
in the Springlight
dance
with me under the sky.
Dance
on
your tiptoes and turn me and
whirl me and lift me
and teach me to fly!

Carry me
on your wild shoulders
I'll
catch all the petals
that spill!
Dance with me,
Wind,
like
you dance
with the kites
Like you dance with those kites
on the hill!

Look up here, northern painter.
I'm the one who soars above you,
I'm the ruler of the sky,
Royal hunter, proudly watching.

Are there others that you know of
Who from over two miles high
See the salmon in the river
As it glistens in the sun?

Can you speak of any other
Who can dive at breakneck speed
Always focused on his victim?

I can see you there below me.
I can see you crystal clear,
See the speck upon your cheek.

I have watched you down there painting
In the cold till night was on you.
I have often looked and wondered
If your motives were to harm us.
But with my keen eye I've seen
That you mean no harm against us.

Look up here, gentle painter!
I'm the one who soars above you.
Look way up and don't be frightened.
I'm the ruler of the sky,
Royal hunter, proudly watching.

PLOWED FIELDS

The plow carves furrows
Raked long deep lines
Straight as for times that
Stretch to the horizon
Rippling like fan spines
Of shadow and light

PREFACE

When I was young and had just begun to write
I considered myself a poet.

In my self-centered fourteen-year-old world,
poetry was immediacy
and spoke to longing, loss, hope, and absurdity.

You could not tell lies when you wrote poetry.
Poetry was sudden impact and the truth.
Poetry was odd character in sometimes
odder circumstances.

I didn't understand meter, but
I knew what I felt and
what I saw and,
because I was very young,
when I thought myself a poet
there were no barriers...

My poetry doesn't sing the song of the sonnets, but then
I sing a different kind of music--
which is what it's all about anyway.

HOT FEET ON THE BEACH

Bare feet,
be smart
there's solar fire
baked into
each grain of sand.
too burning hot
for standing flat!

dig down:
you'll find
a hidden cache
of ocean cool
to beat the heat

Even
cherrystone clams
know
that!

SO FAR
By Naomi Shihab Nye

notices   flutter
                 from    telephone   poles
                               until    they    fade.

OUR SWEET TABBY   AFRAID OF EVERYTHING
BIG GRAY CAT   HE IS OUR ONLY CHILD
SIBERIAN HUSKY   NEEDS HIS MEDICINE
FEMALE SCHNAUZER  WE ARE SICK WITH WORRY

                       all night I imagine their feet
                          tapping up the sidewalk
                        under the blooming crepe myrtle
                          and the swoon of jasmine
                                       into the secret hedges
                                                     into the dark cool caves
                                           of the banana-palm grove
                                    and we cannot catch them
                                    or know what they are thinking
                          when they go so far from home

OUR BELOVED TURTLE   RED DOT ON FOREHEAD
VEGETARIAN                 NAME OF KALI

    please     please
            if you see them
call me    call me    call me

IN MOTHER'S SHADOW

I walk behind Mother
through the woods
careful
not to touch the poison oak
she points to with her stick

She sees snakes before
they move.

She finds her way
by the smell of the trees.

She stops to rest
the very moment
my shoes grow
heavy
and gives me water,
gives me shade

in her steady
shadow

THE SEA IS OUR MOTHER

The sea is our mother
Rocking,
      rocking.
See how she fills
       her blue arms
 with gifts--
       slippery bits of

weed,
        white
             shells,
                    fish
as bright as
       wisps
            of moon.
Hear how her voice
     lifts,
         falls,
                 lifts.
while she sings our
                             life.

THE LIGHTHOUSE
By Liz Rosenberg

I want to live among the big, bell-like, and moving things
with purple beach pea flowers opening
and closing, day into night the beam
casting across the foam.

Summer stars and Roman candles have drowned
themselves hissing down against the black
and gold-lit sea, washing with sailors' caps
at the last thin curve of the Cape, the Light
a pulse of safety when a child
awakens, feels car headlights rake
ceiling and bed, the emptiness of space,

and crosses to the window and looks out.
then daybreak of the lighthouse swings,
goes steadily across the wall--
a blinking owl at the windowpane,
dragging the mirrored blackness out,
bringing a shining seaweed twig or flowering wave to shore

I want to live like that,
to be a great and watchful eye
that sends all its light out and takes nothing back.

Untitled
By Paul Janeczko

Stickball players shout
as moonlight floods their field
from curb to curb