Hollis Kurman
Hidden Gifts
Claim this feather call,
colloid of song.
If cackle were caw or whistle a taunt;
if strutting had a sound, if pleading a peep.
Listen.
Deconstruct the whir shaving the breeze:
The hummingbird
and her last trumpet flower.
Amlanjyoti Goswami
Evening descends on the city
At the barricades, a cop whispered yes
Something had gone wrong
But no one was saying anything.
Things were hushed into sunset
The streets emptying.
We walked to and fro, hoping to find a clue
What ailed the city this evening
The birds swerving past darkness
The empty quiet deafening.
We walked a little more, on the bare street
Deserted of time.
It was hard to believe–these were the same streets
Where we bustled all day.
More barricades awaited us, gun toting
But the cops weren’t saying anything.
A thought did cross me–and then I–quickly shushed it
Before it was born in my mouth.
I asked you: Why are we walking here?
Let’s go elsewhere–and check out what’s happening.
But we knew in our heart of hearts
The same scene would play out there.
We reached the metro stop
Where a Good Samaritan showed us the way
Told us which train was going where.
We asked him if he wanted tea
But he said, no, today was not the day.
This made us believe that trains run on time
Even on a day like this.
A day of reckoning–everyone knew–would come one day
But no one expected today.
When it came, no one knew what to do.
Everyone took shelter in their homes
For fear of what the city could bring
What it could break into.
Only we remained, endless wanderers
Prowling the empty streets and stations
Looking to find–what was inside our hearts
The corridors of the mind
Where things went on as before
As if nothing had happened.
Claudia Gary
Our Song
At last our music has meandered back
so I could savour it in solitude,
outside your scrutiny, though a strange mood
still hangs above the watery cul-de-sac
where we once sailed. Hearing our favourite sound,
no longer do I feel dark currents pull
toward the ocean floor. Each syllable
rings out against the chance I’ll run aground.
Since you’ve returned the melody I sought,
I have no need to look for antidotes.
Waves washing over each unruly thought
of you, our old song’s life preserver floats
beside me, rarely needed. I am caught
swimming ahead in joy, between the notes.
Claudia Gary
Hyperacusis
‘an auditory phenomenon described as a hypersensitivity to everyday sound’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196070918309803#bb0020
Although there was a time
I might have heard you whisper
from another room
nowadays the pain
of too-loud noise is with me
more often than the songs
of catbird, robin, crow,
piercing, stroking, weaving
their learned and inborn patterns
into morning air.
After spending time
with someone whose voice thundered
I treasure birdsongs more.
Their return was gradual.
How could I not have noticed
that they were fading from me?
So powerful was the sway
of being wanted.
Jennifer L. Freed
Practising Für Elise
He is dead, and she is dead, but still
there are the notes
he wrote for her,
and you,
in your late life,
are learning:
your hands at last have found the rhythm
of his hands,
and his life moves
the very air you breathe.
Jennifer L. Freed
Mother at the Piano
On the bench beside her, the basket
of unfolded laundry, clinging
to its wrinkles
as she leans and sways,
her fingers pounding
and then gentle
on the keys.
Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi
The Lord of the Getaway
And soon, you will get used to grief
like walking in the rain
feeling the threads dropping
and you, with a million hands
trying to tug on to everything
just to feel God at the other side.
To feel the holiness under your skin
and resonate it to something
like sinking in your bones
forming a ripple and then ripples
and soon enough you cannot float
except in something holy and light
and you make poems make you.
And you make them Be.
Make them into prayers tiny enough
they will sneak out of your throat
without you noticing. Wipe your tears
and wish all you want.
There are enough stars waiting on you
to become and see you through.
Olga Dermott-Bond
Bad rays
came out of the television, so me and my sister
weren’t allowed to sit too close. John Craven
looked more serious than usual, showed us
a grey building with a shredded hole in the middle
and slate-coloured people shrunk in hospital beds.
I didn’t know anything about creaking power plants
that leaked their stuffing like old sofas, years away
from learning about atoms or watching government
reels with faces peeling like grapes, families of plastic
dummies in Utah frothing, boiled milk spilling
from a pan. Mum had brought the good carpet
from the last house with us, and I could jump
across its deep blue to each bright yellow circle
that repeated itself over and over all the way
to the kitchen. We had to turn over to UTV
when dad got in, endless fuzzy arguments over
marching up roads, Ian Paisley shouting. Petrol
bombs. Six counties I could cover with my thumb.
When school finished in July, Mum said we should
play outside all day, but before teatime, our noses
were inches away from Tony Hart and Morph,
then Newsround again, which showed some
pictures the children from that huge country
had drawn: a place unframed with blasted trees,
green rain, no birds, no sun, bad rays—
Simon Brod
Errinundra
‘…the oldest and largest Shining Gums known to exist.’ [Visit Victoria website]
With a silent prayer
not to be bitten or stung,
us-two step into the forest,
tapping the ground with our walking-sticks
tunk, tunk, tunk
We don’t want to surprise, or be surprised—
by deadly things.
Sporadic laughter erupts—
monkey-voices of kookaburras.
We look up, curious, but foliage is thick.
Our sticks bounce pleasantly on hard earth,
tell our hands it’s OK.
The going is easy,
easier than in the forests of our imaginations,
tunk, tunk, tunk
as if the trees part to show the way.
Strange sounds arrest our ears—
cockatoo’s rusty gate,
bellbird’s squeaky door,
whipbird’s slow-charge laser weapon—
interrupting us-two with newness
as being in the world for the first time.
From towering trunks
the canopy rises to perpetual blue
and sun cascades,
spills columns of silver and green
onto drowsing treeferns
where cuckoos telegraph dot-and-dash warnings of our approach,
and crimson rosellas, busy in the branches, break off their palaver
to watch and listen
tunk, tunk, tunk
while at ground level
creatures crawl and creep unseen
but not unheard,
rustle leaves
close enough to touch
tunk, tunk, tunk
sending our hearts scurrying.
Us-two are walking hunched,
wary of groans and snaps that tumble from high boughs,
knowing we are discordant here
as we descend
ta-tunk, ta-tunk, ta-tunk
through purple shadows.
Step by step
air thickens,
leans into us-two
tunk
until we come to silence.
We have entered the presence of the King.
His bark shines blinding
and His extent is unmeasured:
us-two outstretched, finger to finger,
would struggle to reach even half-way round,
nor can our eyes scale His crown.
Swept up in a deeper, older flow,
us-two begin to know what dust we are made of.
We let go our sticks to free our hands,
feel the rhythm of thousand-years skin,
its warm roughness,
its twists, folds, and cracks,
and find we too are resonance, are pulse.
Kevin Vivers
Been driven’ all night
The photographer writes: ‘I always have a camera with me. It might just be a quick trip to the grocery store, but you never know when the light, the colour, the subject, and the angle will come together to make an interesting image. And I strive to make at least one image every day to keep practising and training my eyes, reflexes, and intuition. It’s knowing where all the knobs and buttons are. How the lens will focus. All those functions become deep muscle memory, so that when the camera comes to your eye, there is no hesitation. You see, frame, and press the shutter.
Kevin Vivers, Been drivin’ all night, photograph, 2023