TAKE AWAY THE ACCOUTREMENTS, GET TO THE ESSENCE

by Barbara Simmons

Photo source: Flash Art

for Anna Halprin, dancer/choreographer

born July 13, 1920, died, May 24, 2021

In this picture you’re barefoot on your deck,

a wooden acre wrapped around your home,

your natural dance studio, where cloud and sky and sun and blue

help bodies became dancers, where singular experiences

beyond the body find their way inside,

becoming gesture, movement, giving answers

to why we move this way, not that, into, around,

under the others on the deck, the patterns of their limbs,

and feet, and hands, letting story enter body, exit dance.

You teach by showing that you move for love, to share

what lives inside your heart, so others find what lives in theirs.

You write that when you eat a carrot

you eat the sun, that we are but the human dance

of life, recycling everything we see and touch and feel 

into the you and you and you we brush past 

on this deck, beyond this deck, into the trees, into

the ecstasy of branches reaching.  I watch you move

others to move themselves to be more, feel more, 

uncover ways we can connect, to treat

the very ground we stand upon as holy, the feet that

touch it then and now and hence as sacred, the hands 

that reach above our heads potential wings that soar,

that share, that speak the only message that will matter,

that we all have mattered here.

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, resides in California—finding the coasts inform her writing. She graduated from Wellesley College, received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University. A retired educator, she continues to explore the communion of words as food for memories. Publications have included Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent, OASIS, Common Ground, Soul-Lit, Hamline Literary Review, Writing it Real, NewVerse News, and CAPSULE STORIES.

IN THE TIME OF COVID: 52 MORE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

by Susan Terris

On a train from Victoria to Lake Louise, I found a deck of cards called 52 Things to Try Once in Your Life. Because I’m rather superstitious, it took ten years and sheltering because of covid-19 to remove the cellophane and look at the deck. Though I meant to look forward, the cards kept demanding I look back. Shuffling randomly, I decided it does not matter how many circuses I have watched or that, more than once, I’ve asked a stranger out. Ridden a motorcycle? Yes, as a teenager, though forbidden, I rode Louis Guttman’s around Hampton Park. Written the Great American Novel? Do 21 books published for children and young adults, add up to a yes here? And sure, I’ve milked a cow, yawned through an all-nighter, tasted snow, bought a lottery ticket, ridden in a hot air balloon, been on a safari. And I’ve flown a kite, changed a diaper, fed a horse, and slept under the stars. What about invent? Yes, in the early days of computers I trained with secretaries from law offices and PG&E on the new IBM Displaywriter. While doing this, I “invented” 2 new work-arounds for the machine that IBM added to their original brochure. Children’s books written: yes, already answered. I’ve gone fishing, read a whole book in one night, pooped in the woods, won awards, gone skinny dipping, been massaged, written and received love letters. (Is this getting boring? Too bad. Can’t stop here.) I’ve made a wish, bought stock, spoken in public. Front row seats? Yes, Saw Othello with James Earl Jones and noted in his death scene that he had plantars warts on the bottoms of both feet. I have written to a president but won’t say who it was or if I was praising or blaming him. And of course, I’ve been to a baseball game, a beauty salon, dressed to thrill (or tried to), climbed many mountains (literal and figurative), left a big tip, supported a good cause—like the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. I’ve watched something grow—not only my plants but my children, grandchildren, and now am watching great grandchildren.

 

I’ve also gone singing in the rain when I was about 17, after seeing Singin’ in the Rain, at the old Esquire movie theater with my best friend Susie and my 7 year old sister where we exited into rain, put up our umbrellas, and walked along the top of a low wall singing, "Singin’ in the Rain." But wait—stop. This is where the questions begin to get harder. Yes, I’ve had a tattoo yet not the one anyone wants. After a mastectomy and reconstruction, the newly formed nipple and areola were tattooed. So now, after this sober moment, I fan out the handful of unaccomplished or undesired cards. I’ve never read only the first and last page of War and Peace or any other book, never owned an autographed picture of someone famous, never stayed in bed all day even when sick. I have never thought of trying to forgive my parents who gave me little to complain about. I’ve never made a Life List or Bucket List but would like to visit the Hermitage Museum, see Angkor Wat, Easter Island, and the Great Barrier Reef (so I guess in my head, I have an unwritten list).

This takes me to the final two cards. Two yesses, I have saved for last. Have I asked important Life Questions? Yes, so each morning when I look in the bathroom mirror, I ask myself: Who am I? What am I doing? And why? Where am I going and why? Yes, there still is one more card. It says Face Mask. At any other time in my life, I would have just said yes: made them out of paper, papier maché, clay, plaster. Carved them from wood. But now, in the Time of Covid, the card haunts me. Eyes of the mask are closed like a death mask. And now I wear masks everywhere. Now the face mask is part of my morning mirror’s life questions. Now not where am I going, but will I or we ever go anywhere again or will we ever stop being afraid, stop masking (both literally and figuratively) our fears. Is there, I ask my mirror image each morning, even going to be a future? Will we ever again return to the life and the world as we once knew it?

Susan Terris’ recent books are Familiar Tense (Marsh Hawk) 2019; Take Two: Film Studies (Omnidawn) 2017, Memos (Omnidawn) 2015; and Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk) 2012. She's the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and one play.  Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos was in Best American Poetry 2015. Her newest chapbook is Dream Fragments, which won the 2019 Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

A THURSDAY EVENING IN JULY

by Marc Swan

Two couples, one deck, no masks,
seated at separate tables
six feet apart drinking chilled white wine,
eating snacks from separate trays—
crackers, bleu cheese, olives, carrots, celery.
Conversation starts with tomato plants—
kind, size, growing patterns, anticipation
of the fruit called by some a vegetable
that will soon burst through on this deck.
Dusk settles, conversation shifts to the virus—
what we know, what we believe, what
we want the future to hold for us, for our
families. Subject moves on to politics—
a litany of those things we can’t control,
think about, worry about, and here we are
once again saying it out loud. Hopeful
on one level, pessimistic on another.
The take down of a society, principles
and values, by one man and his motley crew
in less than four years. Good thoughts
on fruit ripening replaced by anger, confusion,
hopelessness. Thunder jolts the air, rain
falls in heavy pelts against the umbrellas.
We’re invited inside, not sure the best plan,
but here we are socially distanced, no masks,
a fresh glass of white wine in hand,
conversation shifts to what we can control
or at least think we can.

Marc Swan’s latest collection all it would take was published in May 2020. Poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Stony Thursday Book, Channel Magazine, among others. He lives in coastal Maine 

with his wife Dd.