Laurie Belanus-Odell 

Wintering Over

A chill wind prepares the land for sleep,
snow-weighted clouds brush golden
stubbled wheat fields and bare clotted earth
laid out in heirloom patchwork stitched
from lean and bountiful years, hand-quilted
like a mother’s lovely, unfolding dream.

Poplar trees with eerily uniform trunks
arranged in perfect symmetrical lines, resist
strictly enforced conformity, their flaming
arms reach for each other, tangle and entwine.

Here, good souls touch down
like wind-blown seeds from distant lands
of sunlit love, fading purple twilight
and midnight blackness, gently
settling in fertile, protected hollows
where possibilities rest and winter-over,
awaiting the time to wake and begin anew.

Laurie Odell 

Chemistry

I loved the white coat, safety glasses
and foreign names of lab implements;
crucible, beaker, pipette, Bunsen burner,
the acrid smelling, gem-hued powders,
blue flame-lit tubes and cylinders
reducing mystery to elemental ash.

We were real scientists, memorizing
atomic numbers (I no longer remember),
tingling with imminent breakthrough,
though we investigated only the solid,
concrete principles of Chemistry 101.

Learning is like that, fresh to the novice
deciphering phonemes for the very first time,
unraveling the delicate simplicity of haiku,
or trying to connect pinprick constellations
while lying on a mountaintop with a man
you believe you will always love,

love being the ultimate chemical reaction,
fusing a thousand acquired elements
of self and other into a new composite,
amorphous and mutable, yet resilient
enough to flex without disintegrating
into meaningless, random dust.

Monika Bartsch 

Release

I have become reticent, each year
adding dark to my lightness
I remember vaguely when
I radiated

It was not so long ago

Now a rock, retribution etched,
settles solid on my chest,
I cannot see the feather I once was
drifting from this high place

faith the air beneath me.

Balanced where edge meets air
above the green unfolding
alpine jewels reveal the face
of the goddess sleeping .

Clouds seep ragged,
a softly closing circle,
I am riding the cloud center,
trees dripping bearded lichen

witness my ascent.

Marsha Hollingsworth 

Confidence

Confidence has worn to translucent skin,
beneath which the inner workings
are on open display

look closely

the gears don’t quite fit together,
resulting in uneven wear
and inconsistent operation.

Alone

Down the hall
the Petri dish laundry
room cultures mildew
in the moist folds
of sheets and tee shirts

blond dog hair
forms a second carpet
over the existing one
and spattered coffee paints
the kitchen tile mocha.

There is always the question
of dinner, that mindless
repetition, seven days a week
what to make, what to make?
and the dishwasher calls,
needs emptying and feeding.

Sometimes I am dizzy
from this endless routine
and I want to be alone,
not just for an hour or two,

those thin wafers of peace
that dissolve too quickly
on the tongue, dissipating
with the next interruption.

Marsha Hollingsworth 

Revolving Art Gallery

I am very happy to bring the art of Marsha Hollingsworth to Water Line's art gallery. Marsha was the artist featured in the first book, Movements, published by Water Line Press in 2003. Her striking sumi ink paintings were a perfect fit for the poems, lending depth and beauty to the hand sewn limited edition. Did I forget to mention she is also the talented bookbinder I work with on all of my projects? I admire her for keeping the ancient art of hand sewing and case binding books alive and lovely. She is also a generous and wonderful person.

As with all content displayed here, I ask you to respect copyrights and not reproduce any work without permission of the artist.

Choice

This brilliant morning
anything is possible

we are limited
only by rigid minds
whose fragile confines

can be vaporized
by choice alone.

By Monika Bartsch 

Revolving Art Gallery

Please welcome artist Monika Bartsch to Water Line's Revolving Art Gallery. Monika loves to paint and has spent several years taking as many classes as she can to learn more. She also happens to be my mother-in-law and one of the sweetest people I know. Enjoy!

Ambient Light

Nightfall in Bryce Canyon
unveils a 7.3 magnitude sky,
darker than anywhere
else in North America.

From here,
we gaze millions of light years
into the past.

We memorize the Milky Way, imprint
its studded arc on translucent lids,
capture night behind our veiled eyes.

In Zion, beneath red walls
rising sheer from the river bed,
the Virgin endlessly
tends the stone.

She has molded an oasis
attracting wildlife, songbirds
and millions of tourists
who recreate the very city
we are trying to leave behind.

We trade free dominion to preserve
the canyon, herd onto a shuttle bound
for The Temple of Sinawava,
where we slowly disembark
and shuffle the trail to the Narrows

behind the crowd we rode in with.

When we were young,
we drenched our feet here,
felt small and sacred beneath
these cathedral walls.

Gathering Stones

He gathered the stones together,
piling them gently on top of each other.
When I asked him why?
he was not wary to share.

He looked at me solid and claimed,
The stones do not like to be alone;
wrought from the belly of their mother,
these loose siblings wish to rest together.

I stopped and leaned down
to view their jumbled repose,
it did not seem so far-fetched
to believe as he did.

I too longed for their smooth
closeness, worn edges touching,
asking nothing but to lie
together in stillness.

Artist in Residence: Laurie Odell 

Immutability

Water understands immutability.

Water will always be water whether liquid, vapor, ice,
it does not question its vacillations or many moods:

blackened cloud walls
trail rain in wide veils
to the water line

squall waves advance
like desperate soldiers
taking the beach

the sky pink silky and spun
red wisps reflect
upon the silent ebb

naked sand shimmers
under a flooding moon
velvet tide

fog caught in spiny treetops,
the sweet remains of morning
weightless and white

towering indigo walls
erode the crystalline past
into the sea

it is all one to the droplet
effortlessly becoming the ocean.

Shards

The red flower centered
between exotic curled lines
evokes the smell of old Jaipur,
the Hawa Mahal ~ Palace of the Winds,
where the maharaja’s women once peered
from pink honeycombed windows above streets
overflowing with painted elephants, camels, turbaned men.
A river of color, movement and sound,
from red-dust shrouded sunrise
to ember scorch at the horizon line;
the desert broken only by the organic rise
of dung and mud bricked houses sheltered
by one denuded tree, a mirage of shade.

A cobalt hurricane spiral or vine’s end,
worn too small to ever tell its origins,
its story, the shelf on which it sat.
A fragile immigrant perhaps, hand-carried
from the old country by someone’s mother’s mother.
Whole and admired for a century before
its demise, told with regret-laden mouths,
mother to daughter, daughter to mother,
Oh, I wish we still had that blue bowl, do you
remember? Great grandmother dropped it
when she heard about Johnny.
A circle of memory, come to rest
on this distant curve of beach.

The cream and blue striped shard
could be my grandmother’s coffee cup.
Rimmed brown and lipstick stamped,
sip, then drag on the Benson & Hedges
always attached to her electric-tipped fingers.
The cup was most likely broken in the war
that raged until death parted my grandparents.
Maybe it sailed harmlessly past my grandfather’s shiny
head and hit a rock near the creek, exploding into pieces;
a small token of their fragmented marriage
imbued with a lifetime of regrets, carried to the sea.
Grievance-scrubbed, muted by the journey,
this fragment must be handled with care.

You remember how you focus when searching
for the perfect frosted chip of glass, a glazed
sliver tangled in the eelgrass at your feet?
I found the largest piece this way,
delivered on a tide of need, at the ebb
of an unexpected storm;
a perfect cross, soft edges raised
on a rough slab of terra cotta.
The sun had warmed the worn shape
that nested in my palm like a missing piece,
as my restless fingers traced
down and across, across and down;

asking questions, seeking answers.