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.