Sarnia, Ontario

Beauty Across Borders

In the beginning it is found on the underside
of its protective habitat, a yellow egg
changing from saffron into transparent grey.
Its tiny head visible beneath its fragile eggshell.
In its newborn capacity it consumes
a measure of itself in milkweed, eats
voraciously to become mobile, ready to pupate.
Its magic gland weaving a silk shield,
a green drop that slowly mutates into a chrysalis
of emerald and gold. Its inner self transforming
into ringed spiracles, multifaceted legs
meant to grip new twigs, hang upsidedown
until one miraculous day, it unfolds
into a stained glass wonder of orange and black.

One blow can crush its fragile form yet Danaus Plexippus
will leave this garden birthplace, rise ballet-like
into a still autumn air, to travel great distances.
Its migration as sure as the seasons of this earth.
It travels without passport, a borderless journey
threatened by unseen terrorists of nature.

As a monarch, it rules over all the insect kingdom
with the power to transmute its tiny frailty
into a vehicle of toughness and sweet
unexplainable memory, alighting everywhere.
Touching briefly on our ungreen existence,
our own frail earthbound selves living in bordered fear.

Born in Newfoundland, poet/artist Peggy Fletcher is author of five poetry collections and five chapbooks, the most recent FROM THE RESERVES, Beret Press. She is married with five grown daughters and is a strong advocate for peace and nature. She currently resides in Sarnia, Ontario.

Trenton, Ontario

Road to Havana

On the bus to Havana
the 4 lane highway is bordered
with the shrunken bellies of drought marked palms
We pass a tractor stalled and steaming
in the good rusty earth
for want of spare parts
Another imposition
of punitive power
another crop delayed

We share our journey
with pre-revolution relics
the rolling remnants
of plump fendered Fords and Chevys
Tough side-carred Yugoslavian motorcycles
Massive and menacing Soviet trucks
which unsupported now
remain steadfast in their duty

Everywhere here
it is threadbared
made cobbled to work
bentbacked and sweating
refusing to buckle
with dignity
and unbroken

I am reminded
that nothing is taken
for granted here
Recycling is a foriegn concept
where nothing can be wasted
This is survival
a necessary culture
I am also made to remember
that these quiet people
who give so much to others
are at war …under siege
and though they would not ask it
I am always inspired
and humbled
among them

R.D. Roy recently performed at the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists, the University of Havana, and the Cuba International Book Fair while on tour with the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance. His poetry book “Three Cities” (Hidden Brook Press) was launched in March at Hot Sauced Words in Toronto.

Kitchener, Ontario

In which the Writer wonders whether Auden was right

Poetry makes nothing happen over and over. Nothing
slides into your life and heaves itself onto your tall
lap. What a load of old bollocks. Nothing weighs
you down; you squeeze out from under and it lolls

at your feet, never shifts itself. Nothing’s a lazy bastard.
Its great galumphing absence slows you. You trip
over its long naked tail on your way to the cellar,
where you want to hide from the nothing ripped

from poetry. Spiders spin webs between your fingers.
Arachnids know from nothing. So does damp.
Something shuffles from behind the box of books
you saved from the fire, curling adventures and camp

manuals, something small shambles out. It’s
near-sighted and does not love your excuses.
Something’s ugly and nothing’s got the long
sick suck of shallow good looks. It’s got its uses.

It burns the fat of time in heat units of revision.
Your undivided attention. Nothing’s your decision.

Tanis MacDonald lives and writes in Kitchener, Ontario, where she is assistant professor of Canadian literature in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her new book, Rue the Day, is available this April from Turnstone Press. Visit her online at www.tanismacdonald.com.

North Bay, Ontario

Spacetime Continuum

(For Chris, On The Occasion Of His 23rd Birthday)
“To truly comprehend space one needs to feel the weight of time; and to truly comprehend time, one needs space to move about.”
-Hippokrites

Somewhere in that vast and open country
between the father and the son
there lies a lonely border
crossing:
unguarded event at Doppler blue horizon.
.
This is the interstice
where father and son
vacuum mute
dare only nod each to the other
as they pass
at compass points.
.
Past this checkpoint in time,
both become more than before:
fellow travellers –
.
fellow travellers with different passports
.
who know why spacetime
is one word
.
who know that time travel is
not just possible
but as inevitable as graves
and gravity,
as finite but unbounded
as space
.
who know that forever after
is forever after
and the arrow of time always pierces the heart
.
who know
but do not regret
that in that space of forever after
whenever they travel together
they will share this burden of time.

Ken Stange has been a League member since the 70’s. He is the author of 7 books of poetry, fiction, and art and hundreds of periodical publications, including in scientific journals. Website: KenStange.com Editor of Nebula Netzine: KenStange.com/nebula Publisher of Two Cultures Press: Two CulturesPress.com Personal Art Gallery Site: KenStange.com/gallery

Amherstburg, Ontario

Ralph’s Dance (for mom)

In this sunless place
the doctors say
you are anti-social -
violent;
so why are you
slow dancing with me?

Why do you nuzzle
your gentle head
against my cheek;
blow sweet kisses
through my hair
tangled by a brother’s
special love?

And why do we sway
amid a friendly crowd
to songs warm
like evening-breeze
where laughter reigns
for a spell
above the fear
of tomorrow’s pain?

They say you cannot
feel the measure of time,
so why do I see tears
move your midnight eyes;
feel your feet stepping
soft with mine?

Karen P. Ouellette’s poetry has been influenced by her work with the disabled and by her 35 years of ballet training. Widely anthologized in literary magazines. Karen is one of the “Five Poets” presented in both: A THOUSAND YELLOW LEAVES, 2004 and TONGUES OF WHITEWASHED STONE, 2008.

Orillia, Ontario

March

I.

Books pile by our bed
like bricks, each difficult to break. I chisel

until they crumble and cup
the red dust in my hand. At night

we breathe
it in and the tiny diamonds

make our dreams. But I am tired
of sleep, the ice

gate, the dammed
streams, these brittle days piled

like a pyre, waiting to ignite. Outside
people stroll the sidewalks

like zombies, each pointed
in one of two directions. Their eyes

are grey like the landscape.
Their eyes are grey like the skin

of the sky, wrapped around
the mourning

dove sitting frozen on the line.

II.

There are no newspapers
beside my bed. I hate

how they rumple, crumpling
in the corners like discarded, dirty

sheets. Anyway, the news
is all the same. We touch

each other under one word
floating in the still, shocked sky:

War. War. War. War. War.

For five years it swells like a welt
on the world, spelled out

in indigo, in the pointillism
of print. The only ink missing

is blood, other than our own.

Lauren Carter’s first manuscript of poetry, Lichen Bright, calls on imagery from the landscape of her youth, the north shore of Lake Huron, as well as time spent in Southern Ontario and British Columbia. Lichen Bright can be ordered through her publisher at www.yourscrivenerpress.com March is from her latest work.

ottawa, ontario

first

all saints day from ground up
contemplate mothers poisoned bone
pass a makeshift tombstone
plaid handymen prepare storm doors
trample last marigolds
a glebe walk away

old ottawa south ladies discuss october wind
turkey necks clenched
proper way to steep tea (is to brood)

paintings of fields easy curves imprisoned by lines and their brief
flowers cornered
you wonder about restless
men capture
your eyes
know well enough to look
away

ungathered in light are the ghosts
glass shattered stories twenty five down
glisten moments like these

her indian silk gifted by sister
matches café
music bells for no reason
blue haired kindred draws words over paper
what is it to yearn

here are too
many women urge to walk

chrysanthemum yellow at fairbourne and belmont
halloween webbing on riverdale hedges
every house a veranda
each veranda with wind chimes
stones smooth over terrace
exclusive hills

between echo drive
and canals other side
you are concrete
balcony spiderweb dream

Amanda Earl’s poetry is forthcoming in Rampike, The New Chief Tongue and Van Gogh’s Ear. Her chapbook “The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman” was published by above/ground press. Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal. You can read about Ottawa’s literary shenanigans on her blog: amandaearl.blogspot.com. The poem, first, is an excerpt from november, about a walkabout in Ottawa.

Carleton Place, Ontario

April

March saunters off
in a daffodil flourish
and gambol of lambs,

April arrives
with a sprint of fools
and poets with

poems in pockets,
on street corners,

in taxis
on subways,

unfettered and borderless,
random rhymes,

poetic snippets (or
what’s a haiku for?)

heroic odes,
rich tapestries:

well-chiseled words,
cooked and eaten
and stirred.

Have you heard?
It’s rational

National
Poetry Month

Share your flair:

Come,

wax poetic,
if you dare…

Carol A. Stephen lives in Carleton Place. Carol has read at Sasquatch and Tree Reading Series, Ottawa. A member of The League of Canadian Poets, Canadian Authors Association, The Ontario Poetry Society, and Arts Carleton Place, Carol writes Arts Alive! for the Carleton Place Canadian and Arts InthePlace for the Humm.

Kingston, Ontario

Old Cairo

After we heard the Sufi chanting to Allah
in the soaring mosque, we joined in.
Somehow here, religions seem to blend,
lose their edges, oppositions.
After that, we went to Old Cairo, through
the ancient door, into a tangle of tiny
winding streets, past small churches
to the ancient synagogue where Pharoah’s
daughter found Moses in his basket.
(The Nile was higher then). The baby left
behind the synagogue, right near the mikveh.
Why had Pharoah’s daughter come to bathe just then?
Was she instructed in a dream?

I walk in unseen footsteps of those ancient stories,
Imagine long ago ancestors, nameless to me,
living in small houses, buying live chickens,
rounds of bread, bringing up their dark-eyed children.
The men, studying ancient texts, reading
Hermes Trismegistus in Egyptian, learning hieroglyphs,
Puzzling out mysteries of dark and light,
keeping the feasts, never thinking how far distant
descendents would stray from their faith-
would prefer trees, wind, goddesses to their one Lord.
I feel their presence, feel the traces of their beings
holding me here. I might have come to Egypt just for
these ancestors, just to walk these winding
crooked streets.

Elizabeth Greene. My new book of poems is The Iron Shoes.

T.O. (Toronto, ON.)

My Soldier Dan

Dan dreams cool lemonade streams
sweet, fruity
always tart
pulpy sunshine baths
all renewing, as
he scrubs clean
death
Icy rocks in frosty glass
calms,
explosive torpedo head thoughts
In new morale, he
is free from poison vials
rusty blades
days gone
false accolades
war paint streaks
drips down, to
waiting pools
to fools
diluted dreams
hostile propaganda
he could care less, as he
squats in amniotic waters
reborn and aware, of
his paper moon
perfected in his bunker
all too soon
barefooted and naked, he
walks backwards on landmine greens
battlefield playground, and
takes quiet steps, to
his place beneath
the Magnolia tree

and reads his book

Mel Sarnese is a Toronto poet/writer/editor published in Canadian anthologies and literary journals. Her poems have been broadcast on the CBC and TVO. She has recently published a chapbook, ‘Leper’s Cave’ (Baret Days Press and The Poetry Society).