From and About Footbridge Above the Falls:
Poems by Forty-Eight Northwest Poets
Rose Alley Press has done it again! This bold collection of contemporary Pacific Northwest poetry holds a clear sense of voice. The reader is constantly reminded of how the sound of a poem informs the meaning. Alliteration, assonance, rhythm and rhyme, in new forms and old, help to express wisdom and wonder. —Griffith Williams, publisher, East Point West Press
Ranging from introspective to political, from philosophical to ecological, these poems delight the ear and mind. Formal, or formally informed, they comprise both “brief cameos” that “Memory makes of us” (Sharon Hashimoto) and “hazard lights/pulsing like a cornered heart” (Derek Sheffield). Enjoy these lyrical performances as you “Listen to the thunder of the sweet, old rhymes” (Bethany Reid)—and these new ones. —Jennifer Bullis, author of Impossible Lessons
The Anthology Poets:
| Lana Hechtman Ayers | Jim Lutz |
| James Bertolino | David Mason |
| Robinson Bolkum | Brendan McBreen |
| Patricia Bollin | Colleen J. McElroy |
| Anita K. Boyle | Kristen McHenry |
| John Byrne | Robert McNamara |
| Dennis Caswell | Jed Myers |
| Wendy Chin-Tanner | Ken Osborne |
| Rick Clark | Carl Palmer |
| Douglas Cole | Paulann Petersen |
| Kevin Craft | Bethany Reid |
| Mary Eliza Crane | Raúl Sánchez |
| Clark Crouch | Randolph Douglas Schuder |
| Karen Finneyfrock | Derek Sheffield |
| Victoria Ford | Ken Shiovitz |
| Jo Gale | K. Simon |
| Joseph Green | Michael Spence |
| Sharon Hashimoto | JT Stewart |
| Christopher J. Jarmick | Joannie Stangeland |
| Richard Kenney | Jean Syed |
| Donald Kentop | David Thornbrugh |
| William Kupinse | Richard Wakefield |
| Robert Lashley | Connie K Walle |
| Priscilla Long | Carolyne Wright |
Footbridge Above the Falls: Poems by Forty-Eight Northwest Poets
Edited by David D. Horowitz, 978-0-9906812-2-9, paperback, 224 pages, $15.95 US
BROUGHT TO LIGHT
The wind tore through on trash-collection day
and scattered secrets up and down the street.
Our private lives lie jumbled, indiscreet,
though what belonged to whom is hard to say.
An upwind neighbor’s Playboy Playmates pose
in Mrs. Jones’s begonias, broken loose.
Losing lotto tickets deck a spruce
like anemic leaves where disappointment grows.
Intimate prescriptions and bills past-due
bear names, though none the finder recognizes.
And what if he did? The catalog of vices
shows us almost nothing unique or new.
What’s strange is our capacity for shame
when what we strive to hide is all the same.
THE SOUL FOX
— for Chrissy, 28 October 2011
My
love, the fox is in the yard.
The
snow will bear his print a while,
then
melt and go, but we who saw
his
way of finding out, his night
of
seeking, know what we have seen
and
are the better for it. Write.
Let
the white page bear the mark,
then
melt with joy upon the dark.
David Mason
BEFORE THE FALL
Now
that we’re in midsummer, my love,
all
the usual flowers are in bloom.
When
the foxgloves, trillium, and creeping thyme
flaunt
their blowsy bellies, who notices
the
moss that cushions the loam, or the lichen
that
arms the trunks of the pine and fir?
Let’s
walk through the woods quietly.
Take
my hand in silence, then let me go.
Wendy Chin-Tanner
A BED OF ROSES
Like
flowers planted in the wrong bed,
We
sometimes fail to blossom, and instead
Wait
vainly for some friendly spade
To
take us where a better bed is made.
It
never happens, though. The earth
Is
stingy with rebirth,
And
like the whims that bed the plant,
We
sometimes bloom, but often can’t.
Pity
those that nature made
For
sun that ended up in shade.
Pity
hope that waits in vain.
Pity
a cactus in the rain.
Jim Lutz
A GOOD THING
A
good thing he’s retired—now the hours
Can
be spent checking out what’s going wrong
With
his feet, his eyes, his bent body. Dour
Doctors
explain his pains these days belong
To
him the way experience has pressed
Its
fingers into his clay: the price to pay,
A
salmon lunging upstream to the end it guessed
The
very first time it entered the sea.
The
thoughtless effort of moving everywhere,
To
even run without a twinge or cramp—
The
tortoise he’s become has beat the hare
Across
some unwanted finish line. He clamps
Tightly
the book he brings to keep from feeling
Like
a prisoner on death row as he takes
A
dimpled seat in the waiting room. The spring
In
his step has snapped. Can the doc solder the break?
The
speed of life has made a blur of his past.
He
sighs at the call: The
doctor will see you now.
He
sees that one of these visits will be his last.
Before
he can rise to his feet, he has to bow.
Michael Spence
GHAZAL FOR A SISTER
The
house sips rain this quiet night.
No
need for fame this quiet night.
Morocco’s
sweets; memory’s mosque:
Chanting
claims that quiet night.
A
teapot hoards the blue of eyes.
White
bones remain this quiet night.
A
suicide’s tomb: wet leaves and moss.
Beauty—no
blame—this quiet night.
I
keep your bowl, your good
book.
I speak your name this quiet night.
Priscilla Long
GRACE NOTE
She
was a lovely sonnet
Poor
i, a humble rhyme
Thistle
to her violet
Shade
beneath her shine.
Yet
there was that between us
No
genre might contain
A
thing sui generis:
A
passing, sweet refrain.
Her
iambs and my dactyls
(The
graceful and the crude)
Made
music contrapuntal
And
each the other wooed.
Within
her generous pentameter
My
less became her more
She
welcomed my tetrameter
And
whispered, mon amour
That
beings so diverse
Could
make that pairing rhyme!
My
consonance was terse
Her
assonance sublime.
Randolph Douglas Schuder
All Rose Alley Press anthology poets retain copyright of their poems.