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Airscapes by Les Murray

The sky in flood. Marshalled on by pressure, over the many-angled windows of property far below.

The air has states, not places. On the outer of Earth, the sky above darkens to blue matter.

Lower than where Space streaks in, risen scents and particles plateau, diffusing to go worldwide.

The chill slates of that year which, blown out of Iceland volcanoes, famined up the French Revolution hung and globed out on these levels.

Cloud wisps are an instructor chalking to proof! And here it's true: everyone has to have to.

These plunge lands being water dusts that take colour from the Sun: gold cobble, diaphanous frolic, optical liqueur.

A Thailand of cloud-dance, cobalt gold-cracked cyclone Rumba that raged half a province down its river is now ten minutes’ swell under wings.

The bubble-column of a desert whirlwind fails, and plastic-bag ghosts stay ascended, pallid and rare.

Over simmering wheat land, over tree oils, scrub growing in rust and way out to the storeyed Forties.

Here be carbons, screamed up by the djinn of blue kohl highways that have the whish of the world for this scorch of A.D.

Tropopause, stratopause, Van Allen— high floors of the world tower which spores and points of charge too minute to age climb off the planet.

A headlong space rock discovers fiery retro jets and adds to the earth above Earth.

— The Biplane Houses by Les Murray (6%)

The Averted by Les Murray

The one whose eyes do not meet yours is alone at heart and looks where the dead look for an ally in his cause.

— The Biplane Houses by Les Murray (1%)

First Morning by Joy Harjo for Shan Goshorn, December 3, 2018

This is the first morning we are without you on earth. The sun greeted us after a week of rain In your eastern green and mountain homelands. Plants are fed, the river restored, and you have been woven Into a path of embracing stars of all colors Now free of the suffering that shapes us here. We all learn to let go, like learning how to walk When we first arrive here. All those you thought you lost now circle you And you are free of pain and heartbreak. Don't look back, keep going. We will carry your memory here, until we join you In just a little while, in one blink of star time.

— An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo (Page 52)

2 haiku (for Ras Baraka) by Sonia Sanchez

1. Your hands shout eucalyptus songs

2. your poems the smell of morning rain.

— Morning haiku by Sonia Sanchez (Page 63)

The Saving Tree by Ada Limón

This is the cooling part of the fever, when everything: the jumping girder of the Golden Gate's red limb, the tall metal tree house of the Empire State, the black rock cliffs off the Sonoma coast, the drawer's leftover pills, the careless cut, the careening car, the crosswalk, the stop/go, the give up, give up, done, all of it, slows to a real nice drive by. A view of some tree breathing and the mind's wheels ease up on the pavement's tug. That tree, that one willowy thing over there, can save a life, you know? It saves not by trying, a leaf like some note slipped under the locked blue door (bathtub full, despair's drunk), a small live letter that says only, Stay.

— Bright dead things by Ada Limón (Page 22)

The Present by Nikita Gill

As I was sad today, I went out walking again. And some people will say that isn't poem worthy. But poetry lives in everything ordinary even walks where you pretend the trees are your family.

And though it was cold, I bought some strawberry ice cream. I also sang back at a blackbird's scream while an old man laughed delightedly and called me crazy.

I stopped at the corner park to watch autumn's first call, as a show of ochre and amber and flame leaves danced and fell.

On the way back home, I thought of all these little happenings and how well they helped me survive. Despite anguish-ridden bones, I returned home feeling most alive.

— Where Hope Comes From by Nikita Gill (Page 48)

The Fight by Joy Harjo

The rising sun paints the feet Of night-crawling enemies. And they scatter into the burning hills. I have fought each of them. I know them by name. From before I could speak. I've used every weapon. To make them retreat. Yet they return every night If I don't keep guard They elbow through openings in faith Tear the premise of trust And stick their shields through the doubt of smoke To challenge me. I grow tired of the heartache Of every small and large war Passed from generation To generation. But it is not in me to give up. I was taught to give honor to the house of the warriors Which cannot exist without the house of the peacemakers.

— An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo (Page 21)

Torso of Air by Ocean Vuong

Suppose you do change your life. & the body is more than

a portion of night—sealed with bruises. Suppose you woke

& found your shadow replaced by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful

& gone. So you take the knife to the wall instead. You carve & carve

until a coin of light appears & you get to look in, at last,

on happiness. The eye staring back from the other side—

waiting.

— Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong (Page 55)

As Night-Dwelling Winter Approaches

Tree shadows, longer now, lie across the roads all one way but water goes fluently switchback, swelling left, unbuttoning right over successive cement fords.

Cattle walk their egrets around but other long-beaked pensive birds of the low damp places snatch off the ground, rise above stress of the plovers, and start flying

north over the world to sing.

— The Biplane Houses by Les Murray (Page 60)

Living Sky by Federico Garcia Lorca

I won't complain if I don't find what I was looking for. Near the dried stones and the empty insects I won't see the sun dueling with creatures of living flesh.

But I'll go to the first landscape of shocks, liquids and murmurs that smell of a newborn child, and there where surface is avoided to understand what I seek must have a target of joy as I fly in the midst of love and sand.

The frost of spent eyes doesn't reach there or the bellow of a tree murdered by the worm. All forms are interlaced there with the same frenetic expression of progress.

You can't advance through the swarms of corollas because the air dissolves your sugar teeth or caress the fleeting fern leaf without feeling the ultimate ivory surprise.

There, under the roots, in the medulla of air, we understand the truth of mistaken things, the chrome swimmer who spies the finest wave and the flock of nocturnal cattle with the tiny red feet of a woman.

I won't complain if I don't find what I was looking for, but I'll go to the first landscape of dampness and pulse to understand what I seek must have a target of joy as I fly in the midst of love and sand.

I fly in cool air over empty beds, over collected breezes and ships run aground. I stumble, waver, through hard, fixed eternity and a love at last without dawn. Love. Visible love!

Eden Mills, Vermont August 24, 1929

— Poet in New York by Federico García Lorca (Page 81)