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POETRY
The Anvil of God
The sigh of the wind the rustle of the sea are
the anvil of God.
The wind molds our gestures tempers our
souls and its cadence infuses our spirits with the salt of
life.
The sea gnaws our geography nourishes our horizons
and its rhythm marks our paths with the essence of love.
The anvil
of God is the salt of life is the essence of love.
-- Efrain M. Díaz-Horna Salem, Ore.
Cinema Verité
It was like entering a theater for a matinee where I
was the audience and Kathy the confident star or like entering a
confessional face-to-face where I was the priest and Kathy the intimate
confider.
It was usually a man. Tears would roll from her lashless
eyes down cheeks of blossoming sores which grew too on the backs of her
hands. He wants distance he says. Shed absently scratch look down
at the counter, then eye me slyly
from beneath her wig of Prince
Valiant hair the single thing about her that didnt ring true in
her world at the back of the video store with her tapes of Madonna, her
goldfish, just one and her large laugh in her oversized body confined
by shelves of Scarlett OHara Nick and Nora Charles and Warren
Beatty.
A pitched parental scold from the front would sever her
reverie. Discomposed shed write the invoice. Good to see you. Say
hi to Patrick shed call as I walked to the door but that was
before her brown eyes had deepened to black. The last time we talked
together, she was already gone.
When I read her obit a week later
how she shot herself at the back of the store I remembered shed asked
me to take her to town once and I wondered if after all it would have
made the difference but I said no.
-- Judith Robbins Whitefield, Maine
Northwest Sound (1999)
Summer shines on Vashon so close to & distant
from Seattle traffic & Microsoft techies
We pick ripe black
berries by the roadside We dig clams hidden under slimy rocks
on Spring beach and ride a small boat to Olalla where a black house
painter from Tacoma explains his life of lost fingers and close
calls
We sort through life listening to the crow the barking
seal and screeching gulls walking on wet rocks at low tide watching the
ferryboat cruise by then ease into port Tahlaquah
We come
together in the ebb and flow of the tide in mystic sight of
Mt. Tahoma
Later we dance within the sacred circle surrounded
by talking drums tall fir and cedar
At nightfall the
sacrament of love inspires goodbyes at the landing.
Foghorns
cut the silence of moonless night as the ferry from Vashon
ploughs thick fog on Puget Sound the island recedes in layers of
mist
-- Tomás San Diego
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1999 in POETRY
Poems should be limited to about 50 lines and preferably typed.
Please send poems to NCR POETRY, 115 E. Armour Blvd., Kansas City MO
64111-1203. Or via e-mail to poetry@natcath.org or fax (816)
968-2280. Please include your street address, city, state, zip and daytime
telephone number. NCR offers a small payment for poems we publish, so
please include your Social Security number.
National Catholic Reporter, February 4,
2000
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