By John McPherson

Adrift on the Sea of Tranquility

“Dad, do you know what day it is?”
“Yes, it’s my birthday.”
“I never forget my birthday,”
“And how old are you?”
“Sixty-nine, of course.”
A repeated conversation we had each year as we celebrated his sixty-ninth birthday for seven years— until the crystal clear waters of his everyday madness swept him away.

John McPherson is the current president of Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas, president of Gin Creek Poets, and past president of White County Creative Writers. He writes poems, short stories, and letters to the editor, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

By Pamela Mitchell

I will bundle you in blankets and place you 
on porches in cure chairs to keep you

I leave you in care of white pine and balsam
may their ethers open your weary lungs    

I will bundle you in blankets and place you
on porches in cure chairs to keep you

I leave you in care of lilac and lily-of-the-valley
may scent of sweet blooms open your heart 

I will bundle you in blankets and place you
on porches in cure chairs to keep you

I leave you in care of stillwater lakes may
soothing waves slake your parched soul 

I will bundle you in blankets and place you
on porches in cure chairs to keep you

I leave you in care of glorious granite may aged 
mountain lend you its strength 

I will bundle you in blankets and place you
on porches in cure chairs to keep you

I leave you in care   I leave you    I leave 

Note: Our house in the Adirondacks was once a cure cottage for tuberculosis patients. On August 9, 2000 my mother sat in a cure chair on our porch. Ironically, she told my father “It doesn’t get any better than this!” He found her the next morning, having passed from this life.

Pamela Anna Theresa Micieli (Mitchell), MFA, R.N., is a recently retired nurse and has published poems in several journals and anthologies including: The Healer’s Burden, and Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose By Nurses. Both of these were published by Univ. of Iowa Carver College of Medicine Press. She has also published in Pulse: Voices From the Heart of Medicine, as well as a chapbook entitled Finding Lost Pond by Finishing Line Press (2021).

By Rosanne Walters

You came alive at dawn, craving speed,
          eager to clock time and distance.
                Arms and legs pumping faster, ever faster,
            pressing through boundaries real or imagined,
            you relished each strident strike
           against the concrete maze of city streets.

                     Spine now curved, limbs powerless,
         you dream backwards gauging feats and failures in         
      hills once climbed, obstacles dodged, competitors overtaken.
Memories tangled in past and present, your days flow slowly,
each new morning a reward to savor,
yesterdays’ triumphs dimming with each sunset.

In the space between running and remembering,
      you see unspoken truth in lines etched
       across your face by the wind,
          hear reveries echoing in the surrounding silence
           and feel tomorrow as it slips from your grasp,                                                              
                               released to the night sky.

Rosanne Walters, Ph.D., retired after a long career in teaching to include ten years as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University, where she taught MPA students. Rosanne also served as the Executive Director of several nonprofit organizations to include a shelter for battered women and rape crisis center, a youth development organization, and a YWCA. In addition, Rosanne was the Community Liaison Officer for the United State Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia.

She retired from the City of Newport News, Virginia, as the Deputy Director of the Department of Human Services.

She now considers herself to be an aspiring poet who hopes to inspire her children and grandchildren to follow their dreams. She lives with her husband of 54 years and their two rescue dogs, Wrangler and Riley.  

By William Palmer

For a DaTscan
to confirm 
I have Parkinson’s,
I am injected
with a radioactive tracer.

A few days later
my neurologist shows me
an image from my brain
that contains 
what looks like
a radiant horseshoe.

The tip, or heel calk, on the left side 
is gone.

The diagnosis is accurate.

But most
of my horseshoe 
is still there.

Each day I will try to throw a ringer.

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in Braided Way, JAMA, J Journal, One Art, On the Seawall, Poetry East, and The Westchester Review. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

By George Christopher

Transition states not stasis not static
No longer substrate, not yet product
Highest energy on reaction coordinates
Breaking and making covalent bonds

Pre-med, med school, residency, possibly a fellowship, attending
Changing roles, responsibilities, locations, people, relationships
In changes from good to good or good to better
Some-things and some-ones must be given up
For new some-ones and some-things to be embraced

Transition states not stasis not static
Present becoming past
Undetermined future becoming present
Adaptation from cellular to social contexts
Work through grief, move on
Welcome the future in the open-ended
In certainties that give direction
Uncertainties that open new possibilities

George Christopher is a physician who has transitioned into retirement. He and his lovely wife Linda live near their two grown sons and grandchildren in western Michigan.

By Michael Salcman

There’s nothing as beautiful as a marina at dawn
the clacking of ducks
the sky clearing away
the remnants of a storm:

A silvery sky
and a breeze sun-filled
and warm
the steel halyards at rest
from beating on mast and boom
the loom of shadows withdrawing
from the wheel
in the cockpit
the city awakening too soon
like a cat in search of a meal.

The cabins in my sailboat line up
like the lenses in a telescope
the rays of the rising sun
pricking through
from back to front
finally reach into the bow
warming the V-berth
and wake me to the morning.

The tide runs low—
soon there will be
dock hands on the dock boards
and halyards stamping in a stronger breeze
carrying the smell of coffee
and the children asleep below
who won’t yet feel or know
the wonder of the world.

Michael Salcman is a retired physician and teacher of art history. He was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. He is a child of the Holocaust and a survivor of polio.

His poems have appeared in many medical/literary journals (JAMA, Chest, Ars Medica, Blood & Thunder, Caduceus, Healing Muse, Hektoen, Hospital Drive) and less bloody venues like Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Café Review, Harvard Review, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, Raritan and Smartish Pace.

His books include The Clock Made of Confetti; The Enemy of Good Is Better; Poetry in Medicine, a widely used anthology of classic and contemporary poems on medical matters (Persea Books, 2015); A Prague Spring, Before & After (winner 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize); and Shades & Graces, the inaugural winner of the Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize in 2020. Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems was published in 2022.

By LaDeanna Mullinix

Together, we’ll visit our friend
who no longer knows us, and pluck
those pesky little whiskers
off her chin.

I’ll keep the cat
you leave behind.

You’ll come
when I call to say
the cancer’s come back
or the diagnosis is dementia.

I’ll go when you call
to say Joe just died.

We’ll steady each other as we step
onto the bridge, and say:
stand tall, speak a little louder,
smile,
take my hand.

LaDeana Mullinix is a Quaker, a retired occupational therapist, a native Kansan, a Master Gardener and a Master Naturalist. Her poetry and essays have been published in Friends Journal and Slant. Her poetry has been published in one anthology, and two were recently accepted in a forthcoming anthology featuring Ozarks poets, from the University of Arkansas Press.      

1. Multiple Alarms from Heaven

Arctic icebergs are breaking up,
Melting Antarctica airport-runways need new sub,
Strong gales have torn apart buildings, Oops:
Flooding also moved houses like floating cups.

2. The earth responds

The green leaves don’t say goodbye,
The remaining yellow resists snowflakes from the sky,
The brown and red spread out in formation,
This defensive camp has nothing to hide!

3. Human self-determination

We have seen more natural disasters,
Plants are adjusting their lifestyle set by regulators.
Everyone should do their duty,
so why do we still find it hard to be adjusters?

……………………………………………………………

Recite in Chinese

1.      Tiān shí yùjǐng 天時預警 (Multiple Alarms from Heaven)

běijí bīngshān liè,

nánduān jī jiàng nán

kuángfēng sī jiànzhú,

shuǐ yān yuè pínfán.

2. Dìqiú de huíyīng大地回應 (The earth responds)

lǜyè bùcí xíng,

cán huáng jù xuěhuā.

Hè hóng fēnbù zhèn,

hélì jié fáng yíng.

3. Rénlèi zìjué  人類自決   Human self-determination

tiānzāi yú shù fān,

zhíwù luàn xìng cán.

Rén rén yí jìnzé,

héyǐ wǒ réng nán.

………………..

2023 天地人     鍾倫納

1. 天時預警

  北極冰山裂, 南端跑道融, 狂風撕建築, 水淹越洪鋒.

2. 大地回應

綠葉不辭行, 殘黃拒雪征. 褐紅分佈陣, 合力結防營.

3. 人類自決

天災逐漸繁, 植物亂興殘. 個個宜擔責, 為何我尚難    .

…………………

Tom Chung, Ph.D., M.Phil., B.S.Sc., is a professor in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.

Tom has also maintained a life-long passion in the study of Chinese history, culture, and poetry. He is one of a few writers who has published in five Chinese societies and diasporas, despite their political differences.