AND YOU, WHAT DO YOU NEED?

by Janet Ruth

after Mary Oishi’s poem “I Need Poems”

 

These days I need the sun,
            because it gives us light,
            whether blazing, or watery,
            or obscured by clouds,
and the words to share it with you.

These days I need the moon,
            because it’s a reflection of light,
            whether new & invisible, or waxing,
            or waning, or full,
and the words to share it with you.

These days I need all the flowers,
            because they each provide food
            for some creature and our hearts,
            whether tiny prickly flowers of tumbleweed
            or galaxies of sunflowers,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the world’s creatures
            because if they disappear none of us will ever
            be the same, whether the tiger that padded past
            our jeep in India without a glance, or the black widow
            spider spinning a web by our back door,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the recipes I can collect
            because they feed us, whether my ancestors’
            pfeffernuessen and kringel, sauerkraut and pickled eggs
            or my adopted state’s tamales, posole and biscochitos,
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all the stories of standing up to say NO!
            because they show us the way
            and the price we must be willing to pay,
            whether Dad’s stories of being
            a conscientious objector in WWII
            or people today carrying signs that say “No Kings,”
and the words to share them with you.

These days I need all of your hearts,
            whether bruised and broken,
            or fibrillating, or full of joy,
            to hold them up to the light with words,
            because they are
                        the heartBEAT            heartBEAT
                                                heartBEAT
            of the real America.

  

Janet Ruth is a NM ornithologist and poet. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has recent poems in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Ekphrastic Review, The Lyric and anthologies including The Nature of Our Times (Paloma Press, 2025). Her sonnet “A World That Shimmers” won the inaugural True Concord Poetry Contest, was set to music and performed by True Concord Voices and Orchestra in Tucson, October 2023. Her book,Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. 

LEGEND OF WHITE BUFFALO CALF WOMAN

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

Reported birth of rare white buffalo calf in Yellowstone park fulfills Lakota prophecy: “The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning. We must do more,” said Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota, and the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle… Lakota legend says about 2,000 years ago—when nothing was good, food was running out and bison were disappearing—White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared, presented a bowl pipe and a bundle to a tribal member, taught them how to pray and said that the pipe could be used to bring buffalo to the area for food. As she left, she turned into a white buffalo calf. “And some day when the times are hard again,” Looking Horse said in relating the legend, “I shall return and stand upon the earth as a white buffalo calf, black nose, black eyes, black hooves.” A similar white buffalo calf was born in Wisconsin in 1994 and was named Miracle, he said. —AP, June 14, 2024. More photos by Erin Braaten here at YouTube.

When a bison calf appears white-furred

On a patch of yellow stone prairie 

The People know it is mine   Me:

Dark-haired/Dark-eyed 

When first I came to them   Yes:

Miracle   Yes:

Sacred-birth leucism   Rarest

Of rare   Lakota-blessed prayer   Grass-

Rolled   And a pipe I left   Change

Among the geysers/Great

Change meaning What most excites

Returns   Like hunger   Just totally totally

Floored a woman says in a baseball cap:

White   Holding a camera: a long-range lens

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds would like to acknowledge Nadia Colburn, of Align Your Story, and Tom Daley, both of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for their indispensable writing workshops; Doug Holder, of Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene, for his ongoing support; and Susan Richmond, poet and children's book author, who coaxed Ms Reynolds into Plein Air Poetry at Old Frog Pond in Harvard, Massachusetts, a collaboration of poets that lasted ten years and produced as many, beautiful, chapbooks. She is grateful to all.

NO BAD DAYS AT THE FOOD PANTRY

by Deb Freedman

for Lucille Clifton’s “Good Times”

The poet and colleague volunteer at the food pantry.

people drive up

and we put food in their cars

we run hauling bags

meat produce bread desserts

food for dogs and cats

sundry items people choose from the cart

we welcome everyone

greeting people we know like old friends

 

James and Ava have a corner store and a new granddaughter

2 months old

i bought 5 onesies cool for the summer with my friend’s donated $20 kohls cash

and gave Ava a pretty one with a fish on it

for her namesake

she was so excited

she promised she’d take a picture of Baby Ava in it to show me

 

and a woman with a 2-year-old

who just had a baby girl

came for food and diapers

so i gave her a yellow striped onesie

i think she cried behind her glamorous dark sunglasses

 

Jesse said he couldn’t drive himself today

because the surgeon sawed him in half

so we finally met his wife Dina

he brought us a little cardboard bakery box

of his delicious homemade mini cupcakes

like always

and thanked us for helping his family

 

the Steelers fans with rattly truck and 3 cats

got extra cat food

we joked we like them

even though they aren’t Eagles fans

 

there were these 2 guys on bikes

who pedaled over the Calhoun Street Bridge from Trenton

trying to figure out how much stuff they could carry

in their ragged backpacks

even with our reusable bags

they ruefully left a few pounds of their food on the table

and told us to give it to people who needed it

 

after 3 hours I'm sweaty tired

my face sore from smiling at folks

and that was just today

Deb Freedman finds joy in volunteering at a local food pantry as well as writing poetry and hopes to spark recognition, compassion and solutions to the increasing food insecurity of both people and pets in this country.

HOLIDAYS

by Katherine West 

Paleo Art by John Gurche

Today the wilderness is too big.
Even my own body
was made for an ancient
race created on a larger scale.
My hands are winter gloves,
gorilla hands, capable and waterproof.
My feet leave huge, deep prints
in the snow. My heavy head
is too big for my ski cap,
my thick arms too long for my coat.
I am a Neanderthal. I know what to do.
I have survived a lot. Wilderness and I
are the same size. Language
does not interest us. Nor love.

And yet, deep inside, resting under
my primitive heart like a baby,
is my modern self. And like a fetus
I curl in the warmth of the prehistoric
womb and suck my thumb.
I have bad dreams. I cry, but my tears
are absorbed by amniotic fluid
and my moans are muffled by blood.

I want to talk. I want to dance.
I want to read a book. Write a poem.
But everyone else is interested in survival—
their own, not mine. Like my splendid
cave woman, they eat meat. Not words.
Not views. Their dogs run off
with sheep innards hanging from their mouths.

They are right. I am wrong.
These holidays are about having enough
to eat. Not having enough to love.
We have come full circle—
grown thin and sensitive then
muscular and numb all over again.
My neighbor may freeze, but as long
as I don't, life is good.

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near the Gila Wilderness, where she writes poetry about the soul-importance of wilderness, performs it with her musician husband, Yaakov, and teaches seasonal poetry workshops that revolve around "wilderness writing." She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lalitamba and Bombay Gin. Her poem "And Then the Sky" was recently nominated by TheNewVerse.News for a Pushcart Prize.

ON THESE DAYS

by Leslie Prosterman

On my way to drink a coffee in the park,
I ran into an old acquaintance
on the corner of 4th and Lafayette. She spoke
of reading stories to children at Bellevue,
teaching them to make meaning
out of abstract marks on the page.

All these days when I can only
read the news through
squinted eyes, as though
seeing print through blurred slits of light
would make the stories any less dire,

on these days I stop for any chance encounters
standing on concrete with people whose stories

I want to hear with open eyes.

Leslie Prosterman, author of Snapshots and Dances (Garden District Press, 2011) and other poems in various journals and collections, recently collaborated with composer Charley Gerard to set her poem "FluteBone Song" to music, now out on CD (Songs of Love and Passion).  A former academic, she is also a dancer and a sometime student of trapeze.