Poetry

Do I Love You?
by Keith Wilkinson

Do I love you? Listen-
I can turn a soup label into a poem,
Teach any two words how to kiss-
How could our knowing each other
be less than this?

-Hyphen-
by Martin Collis

I read of a man who was asked to speak at the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on the tombstone, the beginning and the end

The first and the last days are markers in time.
But what do those days really mean

What matters is not the birth or the death
But the hyphen which lies between

For the hyphen is the time you spend on this earth
Just a hyphen to show what a life's really worth

And it isn't a house, it isn't a car, and it isn't a 53 Gibson guitar
It's not a position, it's not a possession or membership in a prestigious profession

It's not in the labels on your clothes or your shoes
Or the places you've been or seen on a cruise

We're human beings not human doings
Who pursue money and fame and keep on pursuing

The words on the tombstone are "kindness, and love, family, friendship and laughter"
These are things that continue to ring when your body has reached the hereafter

Choose wisely and well when selecting the goals that you choose to base your life on
To miss the joy is to miss it all and a terrible waste of a hyphen-

Midnight Swimmer
by Mary Mulvihill

She comes out
at the same indecent hour
every evening, leaving
no wet footprints,
she salutes
the night security guard,
then pauses to disrobe
under the lapis sky of August,
lazuli blue
above the vapors rising
from the unnatural color
of the pool.
The steadfast moon
endures the same loneliness
and blesses her attempts
to ransom herself.

First, a simple exercise
against cowering:
She dives
into the chilly water,
then stunned
by the momentary thrill
of entry, she lets go
of her ambitions,
and settles in
to speak
the silent language
of the body.
Her strokes begin,
daringly slow,
to spell out
how her day has been.
Her hands, seek, seek
to clarify
the precise kind of trouble
she is in.

The water needs no interpreter,
For sorrow also knows how to swim.

Side to side
she quietly glides
beneath the turquoise surface sheen.
Her skin comes alive
all over with the cold.
Consoled by motion,
side to side,
she glides and glides,
slippery with delight,
until her stony heart gleams
again, faceted between the moonlight
and the underwater beams.
She would be laughing
if it didn't break the rhythm
of her breathing. At last,
she has become a true fish:
She is not afraid to die.

She marvels that
it took so long
to recognize
what lies before her very eyes:
One day she will fly
beyond the soothing canopy of night,
soar on past Icarus, far
from this floating world
and dive
deep into the dark pool
of another life,
its divine bottom,
pebbled with stars.