Learning To Use a Cane: Post Hip Replacement Surgery

Before I can be released
from the hospital, I must learn
how to use a cane: up—and
the more treacherous—down stairs.

“First, ascending,” the therapist
instructs, as if we’re practicing scales.
“Step up with your healthy leg,
follow with the cane so you don’t
get tangled and tumble down,
then bring up your bad left leg”

He has me practice on the mock stairs
in the hospital’s exercise room.

“Next,” he stops me at the top,
“lower the cane to the step below,
follow with your good leg, and finally
lower your bad one, using the cane
and your right leg to stabilize yourself.”

Cautiously, as if learning to walk,
I follow his instructions, feeling
like a fawn nudged onto its feet
by its doe and ready to run,
which I can’t ever do again:
no longer twelve; no longer immortal.

Still, the pain’s been magicked away,
so I’m grateful to amble my way
through the rest of my life.

Robert Cooperman's latest collection is Little Timothy in Heaven (March Street Press).  Just Drive (Brick Road Press) is forthcoming in early 2014.

Monterey

“It was the first rock festival ever,
even before Woodstock,” Alex Trebek read
the Final Jeopardy clue.
“Thirty seconds to write your response.”

Then the hypnotic fairy tale Jeopardy jingle
tripped out over the air
as the contestants pondered the question,
pens poised over tablets

Only one got the answer,
the guy who was already leading
by a couple grand .
The other two came up blank.

The Monterey International Pop Music Festival
three days in June, 1967,
just after I’d turned fifteen
thousands of miles away in Michigan,
a Midwestern teenager glued to the radio.

Eric Burdon later composed a hit song about it.
“The people came and listened.
Some of them came and played.
Others gave flowers away.
Yes they did.
Down in Monterey.

Ah, the summer of love.
How long ago that seems now:
how long ago it was!

And I’ve still never been to Monterey.

Charles Rammelkamp’s latest book, Fusen Bakudan (“Balloon Bombs” in Japanese), was published in 2012 by Time Being Books. It’s a collection of poems about missionaries in a leper colony in Vietnam during the war. He also edits an online literary journal called The Potomac - http://thepotomacjournal.com/.

Dali Dreaming

of snow, the white canvas
upon which moving images
are projected: a carved skull
white eels are writhing in,
using eye sockets, the mouth,
all orifices, as exit wounds
for ejecting painted birds of
paradise, lush colors leaking
from their bodies as they fly,
reflecting the sun with prisms
that break light into cylinders
to be used as homes, dwellings,
for extended families admiring
themselves in hand held mirrors
as break-in artists escape from
open windows with all that
may be stolen, followed by
the family dog, crawling babies
too young for gazing at reflections
in tidal pools or into the flood waters
that lie beneath the snow laden
plains, burning bushes lighting
the way along the flooded banks
for all dreamers lost

Alan Catlin has been publishing since the seventies. In addition to more than sixty books and chapbooks of prose and poetry, he has won a number of national contests and awards. He has been a finalist for the Brittingham Book Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press, the Lena Miles Wever Poetry Book Award and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twenty times, in both fiction and poetry.

Caesura

Walking down a path beside a stream,
I hear a dozen singing birds, a chorus
of frogs, the happy honking of two visiting
ducks and I stop, suddenly to listen—when
every voice falls silent, except for the gurgling
stream. I feel a myriad of tiny eyes and ears all aimed
at me, a cautious fear that makes their silence so
complete. Bereft of concert, I resume my walk;
the birds resume their chatter, the frogs their songs,
the ducks call out: “It's safe! He's gone!”
                                                                   How sad that their relief is now my own
                                                                   deep sense of loss.

Smoking!
A poem for jazz accompaniment

It was ’53 in ‘Frisco when I emerged at 16 from the fog of adolescence
Into the thick sooty smog of the city streets,
swimming through black smoke bellowing from a million
cars and trucks, planes and trains, gray smoke coiling from the lips
of 100 million people puffing King Size, Regular, filtered and flavored cigarettes, cigars, and pipes…tobacco smoke swirling in restaurant fans
streaming from open car windows, smoke in most offices,
smoke before breakfast, smoke after lunch, smoke every coffee break,
smoke in back of school until they caught me,
but most especially smoke in bars like the jazz cellar…
*(“A Train” starts w/sax intro)
down tobacco stained stairs beneath a north beach pizza pub,
smoke so thick I had to squint to see across the crowded room;
jazz musicians were blowing their brains out next to the bar,
Ellington’s A-Train floating us to Harlem on a smooth tenor riff,
Piano, bass & drums driving the train as Brew Moor sipped
from a smoking cigarette clipped next to his mouthpiece
so's he could smoke and blow at the same time…
And when he blew, white smoke swirled from the bell of his horn,
forming rings of soulful sounds with every exhaled phrase,
and I shivered, thrilled, pressing my 6 foot skinny body back against the plush red lounge, silently sipping my coke, trying 2 lay low, 2 be cool,
2 just dig the music and become like smoke, invisible…
Then Brew stopped blowing...
*(sax stops and bass solos)
and the bass soloed with a rhythmic plucking and slapping of strings
while Big Bill Wijon laid down rail-like chords, blue notes weeping
from his fingertips while a cigarette dangled from his lips,
the ash growing steadily longer, his head wreathed in a cloud of smoke…
Then the drummer rattled our bones *(bass)…and Brew returned
*(sax counts in last chorus of “A Train and out”)
singing again through his smoking horn, and they were all blowing at once
a glorious free-for-all cacophony the audience joined by shouting
“Yes!” and “Say it, brother!” and “Go, man, Go!”…
as the band blew the A Train all the way back home,
gliding  to a stop at the station… *(All Music Stops)
…and the waterfall of sound was silent.

Such wild applause! The musicians were sweating, smiling,
bowing to the audience, most of us on our feet, clapping in appreciation until, Across the room, a cocktail waitress glanced my way.
Oh, Shit! I shook a Chesterfield from its cellophane pack and flamed it
with a flick of my dad’s old silver army lighter, drawing in a breath while smoke curled out of my nostrils into my mouth, my one suave trick
to try and look older, just as the waitress arrived.
She looked me up and down: “Neat trick, kid,” she said,
“Can I see your ID?” I coughed, and blew a smoke of words
as I fumbled for my wallet: “Gee, I already showed this at the door
when I paid my cover…” I passed her my fake ID and a $10 dollar bill.
“I live for this music, don’t you? And they’re playing so beautiful tonight…
I sure would like another coke, my throat feels dry,
and you can keep the change…”“Now you’re talking kid.”
She gave back my ID. “You want a cherry in it?”
“Yum,” I grinned. She winked. “You guys are all alike!”
She turned and worked her way back across the room toward the bar.

As if on cue Brew finished his beer and placed the empty bottle on top of Bill’s upright piano, and the drummer said, “Let’s pick up the pace!”
Brew sucked a long deep drag from his ever-burning butt:
“Out of nowhere, man--B flat,” he said with in-held breath…
*(sax counts in “Out of Nowhere” …3, 4!)
He blew an explosion of smoke from his horn, plunging us all
 into nowhere at supersonic speed, the band racing to keep up with him.
The cramped room crackled with high electricity, the thick air swirled beneath the lonely ceiling fan, and then a cherry coke appeared,
I sipped, and once again the world was right, the band was smoking,
the whole house rocked like a train car smoking through time…
*(Sax fades out, then walking bass accompanies...)
…and later that night, walking up market street alone at two in the morning, smoking my last cigarette, I hummed & whistled as I walked,
snapping my fingers and stomping my feet, twitching my lips
to imitate trumpet and saxophone sounds, scatting immeasurable riffs
all the way back to our rented family flat on Hayes street…
smoking, yes, smoking that jazz!
*(sax cadenza, bass holds on Bb Maj.7)
 

Artist, teacher, ex-San Francisco cop, published author, Wedding Minister, Board President, Santa Cruz Art League, T. Mike Walker grew up in San Francisco and received his MA in Language Arts from San Francisco State University, where he taught Creative Writing from 1962-1965. His first novel, A Way From The World: A Policeman’s Journal, was published in 1970 by Grove Press. His humorous novel, RESPECT,  reflects a portion of his experience teaching high school in the Haight Asbury District. In 1966, he created his first 2D Collage art pieces and sold them through the Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street in San Francisco. He taught English and Creative Writing at Cabrillo Community College from 1968 -98, when he retired from teaching and returned to creating visual art. In 2004 he joined the Board at the Santa Cruz Art League, becoming President of the Board from 2006-2013. In addition to mixed media collage, Walker paints in watercolor and acrylics. He has exhibited widely in Santa Cruz County for over a decade, appearing in many group and juried exhibitions as well as solo shows. 

Millenium to Millenium

                 How many weeks are in a day
                       and how many years in a month?~ Neruda

 Not of this world, mountains rise
obliquely in a winter sky, casting
shadows on sour fields that refuse
to tell me what is wrong.

I am moving— a slow flight
through language I’ve lost
to perfection.

Boxed between panes, dead bees
curled in transparent parentheses.
Soundlessly they take me
by surprise.

I am returning— a dream
coming back in springtime. I will
pick my blade from moist earth

& raise it up to the sun
& wind, and brandish it before
an affluent crowd who seem
to forget where life starts

& ends. I will face their mal-
function, without wanting
to punish them.

M. J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario.  Her most recent poems have appeared in Poetry East, The Chariton Review, Tar River Poetry, Blueline, The Prose Poem Project, and The Centrifugal Eye, among other publications.  Her most recent poetry chapbook is As the Crow Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008), and her second full-length collection is Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010).  Between Worlds, a prose chapbook, was published by Foothills Publishing in May 2013.  She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

Sighs

 “ Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled”
                                                             T. S. Elliot

At the last game that was played. With these hands.
After it was over. Won or lost.
After the equipment had taken us back to the
street clothes. And the others, were put
in a bag, to be washed and forever put away.
There, in the morning, of the dance of the last
Breakout. Or last hit or smash of a racquet, is when
settling of old scores are put away.
In the back cellar, where the old jars are kept.
The packed tins from the last decade are
forgotten. Then, one day as
the whole time is discharged. The old
equipment is given to the kids, or to charity.
Then the next step and the corner where
the same games were being played are viewed.
With a peaceful, but questioning eye. Before
feet take the hands and the body are taken away.
Moving down the lost dreams.
Old hopes. Around the next corner,
of an unknowing morning .


d.n. simmers is an online editor with Fine Lines. He is in the current Nomad's Choir. He
was in the April issue of Poetry Salzburg and is in a newly launched anthology
called Royal City Poets (3). He was in will be in the Storyteller (3 issues) Red
River Review, Iconoclast, Nerve Cowboy. He was in Van Gogh's Ear and
is in the current Prairie Journal.

Zephyr’s Grief

Today the hidden trench
has grown over damp and green,
rye & flax, purple loosestrife

so the whole expanse
appears a veld, tilled
and laced with bloom.

If I went out, I would sink
to my knees—the way we
once kneeled in church.

How empty and quiet
eternity was-- how night
obscured the stained glass

with vast darkness and glorious stars.
Oh my friend
when I remember you,

mistrals blow and twist in me,
your height, your face blurred
by dust and distance.

Friend, where did you go? 
My grief won’t fill in
nor will it fall away. 

I am the meadow grass
bending, folding, every gust
presses me so low.

Lisa Ortiz’s poems have appeared in Zyzzyva, The Literary Review, Bateau and in the anthology 50 Best New Poets 2013.  Two chapbooks are also available, Turns Out (Main Street Rag) and Self Portrait as a Clock (Finishing Line Press).  

Homing 

She wants to know what we’ve decided. 
They all do.
We are standing in a hallway.  Endless.
There are countless closets.  Someone has a key.
No, we are sitting.  It is raining all around us.
The table is dry.  There is a pillow
of wet above us.  We are feeding each other with large spoons.
It is a chowder, not a stew.  There are not enough
clams.  There are always two sides.
The curse of opposites.

What is the answer?  Can you imagine it?
There are houses of pigeons in the back yard.
Trapped.  We walk up and down many stairs.
On the second floor we have to give our passports
to the official behind the glass door.  There are no
stamps on any of the pages.  Someone has a red
ink pad perched open. 

The ground is gravel.  No, it is burgundy carpet.
Even the walls are covered
in carpet.  There is an illuminated painting
of The Last Supper above the fish
tank.  We wait for the train. 
No, it is the bus.  The lights shine
in our faces.  The bus splashes
a curb puddle like a jet of hose.  We are
the flowers.  The doors don’t open.  And then
she asks again.

After Rumi

Listen.  Today, you will
put down your staff.
You will
rest
your fingers. 
No typing. 
No dialing of numbers.
Today,      you shall
listen.

Listen with every part
of your body.
You did not know
your eyes are able
to listen?
Even your organs
can listen.

Do not fear
that feeling
in your chest. 
It is
air.

Gabriella M. Belfiglio’s work has appeared most recently in the Lambda Literary Review as the featured poet.  She has also had writing published in the award-winning anthology Poetic Voices Without Borders, as well as The Dream Catcher’s Song, Avanti Popolo, Folio, The Centrifugal Eye, CC&D, Podium, and The Potomac Review, among other places. She works as an artist and teacher in New York City.

What I Am Not

This morning, rising,
I stop to stare at my own naked body,
breasts like two dark eyes, accusing,
then quickly dress.

Sometimes feeling like no more
than a corpse, I beg:
Look, see what
you’ve done to me.

I am not the same as I was.
As if, in these endless dying days,
there occurs nothing but a building
of what I am not:
something skittish--
the gray fox at dawn.


Winter Poems

I.

And what of this winter here?
The unhappy song of rain,
wind in the bay laurel;
rainwater in the fountain
a mixing of what is ours,
and what is the earth’s.

II.

I go to the meadow
when the snow has slowed
only to see what winter has erased,
witness the strangeness of so much unwelcome white
beneath the firs. I remember
how the body, unmarred by time,
moves in the light of gray morning.

Now, we grow thicker,
more unsure, our shapes changing.

The tortured soul of a poet slips away
like wind through high mountain pine.

III.

Wondering what world you have wandered to
outside of this one, I fear the void
you leave behind:
the silence of falling snow.
I’ve grown weary.

IV.

Never has the cold crept into my bones
in quite this way—a chill as if I have shaken off heavy clothes
and gone running naked into the water,
and later felt it seep from me.

The sea in winter is a woman lying bare,
shivering in the cold.
The north sea has found my blood.

V.

Dark muse of winter,
my mercurial lover;
the pale dust of frost along the roofline;
lightning flickers over the Santa Lucia Mountains.
In the dark bay dances the reflection
of the swollen moon—I think of Li Po
in the Yangtze River.

VI.

Selfish beyond reason,
the howl of fury and wet
of the storm in the night
brings down the tall sequoia,
and with it one hundred years,
the osprey’s nest, my childhood.

This ground drinks the rain
with an unknowable thirst.

Bri Bruce holds a Bachelor’s degree in literature and creative writing from the UC Santa Cruz. Currently a writer, photographer, and editor, her work has appeared in over 15 anthologies, magazines, and literary publications, including The Sun Magazine, Northwind Magazine, and The Soundings Review. Most recently she was named Featured Poet of The Wayfarer Journal. Her work reflects a life amongst her native California backdrop of redwoods and Pacific shoreline. She was nominated for the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize in 2009 as a student of Santa Cruz’s first poet laureate, Gary Young. Bruce lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Rot

When night’s hot breath
touches the grapes
ripening in the field,
grey spores attack,
and a fungus spreads.
Botrytis, a “noble rot,”
shrivels fruit on the vine.
Some grapes need
to be diseased.
Harvested late, they possess
a concentrated sweetness,
the flavor of orange blossoms,
ambrosia and honeydew.
I enjoy this Riesling chilled,
with spicy Thai food
or fresh strawberries.
A toast! To wine! To rot!


Near Año Nuevo

After a storm, low clouds,
shards of grey slate
crowd the sky. A woman
rises from the water
and enters air that stings
like the first sip of Champagne.
She follows footholds
carved into shale cliffs
and reaches an open field
where men uproot a field
of dead-nettle to plant grapes,
a civilizing vine. Salt
sings on the air, then settles
on trees and open fields,
strawberries, and artichokes,
those overgrown thistles
with tender hearts.
Bees dip their tongues
into wildflowers,
their wings spreading
spores of yeast that settle
over rows of ribboned vines.
The grapes mature. Men gather
clusters of Chardonnay,
thick bunches that hang
close to the dry earth.
The few grapes left unpicked
ferment on the vines.
The woman closes her eyes,
places a single piece of fruit
in her mouth—acidic,
sweet, sharp on the tongue.



Jake Young lives in Santa Cruz, California, and works at Beauregard Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He Received his MFA at North Carolina State University. His most recent work appears or is forthcoming in Red Wheelbarrow, Miramar, Solo Novo, PANK, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, phren-Z, and Gastronomica: Journal of Food and Culture. He was recently invited to the 2014 Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

Relocation  

Father brought springtime
carried branches of beginning plum blossoms
the half-hour subway ride from Manhattan to Queens
walked the eight long blocks home
cradled unborn blooms wrapped in white paper
presented them to mother.

She placed them on red Formica counter
peeled back protective coverings
before she opened the cupboard door
took a tall earthenware vase and placed
an arrangement on the living room table
near the plate glass window.

Pale pink peered from brown buds
unfolded into clustered petals
allowed faint aromatic presence
to evoke notions of oriental romance. 
No thoughts of trees missing leaves
birds searching for nests or bees in lust for pollen.

My father gathered gestures
delicate as plum petals
silent as early spring perfume
sad as the ache of cut branches.

Sea Palm

Unlike your giant algal cousins
Macrocystis and Cystoseria that loll
gently in the undulating cradle
of the Monterey Bay, providing
a nursery for urchins and otters,
you live on the sharp chins
of earth jutting out into open ocean
where powerful waves explode
like grenades, release
their energy, crash
down over you, batter
and press you prostrate
into submission with relentless
repetition, day and night
at each high tide.  In the face
of such an assault
your flexibility is without
equal – like a Bobo doll you pop
up, ready for more. 
Violence does not destroy
you as you hold fast to slippery
stone, your tuft of blades
trailing, bathed in surf. 
Turbulence does not pluck you
from your perch and hurl you ashore
into refuse piles of beach wrack
to disintegrate into detritus.
No, you stand serene  
like tropical palm trees
and thrive, anchored
between beds of mussels
and barnacles, exposed,
pummeled, feeling
the full force of living
on the edge –
an icon of resilience.

The end of the road                                               

 is the beginning. No longer guided
by smooth pavement of experience
your path disappears into the unknown,
where out of murky, silent fog
a mirage of adventure emerges.

It takes courage to pass warning
signs, leave the familiar,
freefall
into open space, meet
the unexpected. No longer confined
by the highway of others you are free
as blackbirds flying
over fences to chart
your own way
no matter the terrain, to risk
falling
off the GPS of convention
away from humdrum of traffic
into recognition of self.

Once begun, your journey defies
return.  And to your amazement
bold traveler, satisfaction
awaits you –
shafts of sunlight
piercing
uncertainty.



Lynn M. Hansen is a marine biologist, retired from teaching after thirty-three years at Modesto Junior College, the first woman to teach science there.  For years she guided field trips to the tide pools and aquaria in the Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay areas.  She currently volunteers teaching science lessons to children in local elementary schools.  Her poetry has been published in Hardpan, The Song of the San Joaquin, The Pen Woman, More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets and Quercus Review.  Her recent collection is Flicker, Poems by Lynn M. Hansen published by Quercus Review Press, 2013. 

What If ?

If you came back, we’d have tea or some wine,
or we’d go for walk and we’d chat.
You’d tell me your triumphs, show me your art,
catch me up on the humdrum details of your life.
If you came back, you might remember to ask
what I have been doing, how I’ve been all these years,
and how I spend my time now.
We’d have tea or some wine, or go for a walk,
and then it would end once again.

But if you came back and wanted to really come back,
I’d politely say no, and then it would end once again

Yet I would remember our times on the beach
in the night, when waves washed ashore
as we sat close on cold sand, sharing cognac,
black chocolate, and our cigarettes.
I’d remember our talks, and time
standing still as waves whispered about
catching scatters of rippling moonlight.
I’d think of our walk on wet sand,
our drive through the night, and the night,
our night, when your touch turned to song,
and our slowly ascending duet liquid fire
as we burned together to embers.

I’d remember all that and wish it still were,
but if you came back asking to really return,
I’d politely say no, and then it would end yet again. 


Leningrad Days in St. Petersburg

for J _________

Propelled by pedestrian flow on the Nevsky
into alleys murmuring Raskolnikov’s crime,
hemmed in by dark columns of stone
in shadows of balconies sighing of Pushkin,
past cupolas rippling gold in the sun,
adrift on embankments lining the waters,
across bridges embracing the River Nevá,
through pathways of green with nowhere
to rest but a park bench, or a barstool
that hides in a mound in the wood,

to a smile at the top of the stairs,
a bowl of tomatoes, cucumbers, and dill,
black bread, pocket bottle of brandy to share
—our small room, a retreat from the fear.



Marina Romani, child of Russian émigrés, spent the first part of her childhood in wartime and civil-war China; those early years are the focus of Child Interwoven, a memoir in poem and prose she is currently assembling. Marina’s early work appeared in Poetry Shell magazine; her recent work has been published in Homestead Review, Porter Gulch Review, Monterey Poetry Review, and the Tor House Newsletter. Since 2008, Marina’s poems have twice been finalists in the Central Coast Writers’ annual writing contest. 

 

If There Is a Next Time

Next time I shall not wait
for the lion, nor be bruised
by exaltation. I shall be the stalker
of the female deer, my quiver full
of silver arrows glinting
in anticipation. At night
the owls will sit on my shoulder,
the moon itself will hide
behind poison clouds
of redemption.
There will be a feast
for the fallen, and manna
in the desert, multi-colored coats
for the undulating strays
to make them visible
from a great distance.

I’ll be the bridge
across the fiery cataclysm
and a light house for those
whose shadows disappeared
in the starless black of countless nights.
I’ll refurbish the house
of my fathers. No-one will be able
to enter without a password.

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (Tangents), her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in US poetry reviews. Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s,  Avatar, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Boston Literary, Red River Review, Ann Arbor, Main Street Rag, Misfit Magazine and others.

Checkmate

Just the two of us, thrashing about in the thicket of
prime and composite numbers when my friend says;
Grandpa, how large is Infinity ?

I can tell he is serious so I need to be careful. I take pains
to use words such as unfathomable, incomprehensible
with a concluding flourish about the limitations of
mere mortal minds.

My tutorial is greeted with profound silence and a tinge of
bemused disappointment -- not what I had expected.
        
Resuming our toil in the tangled vineyard of composite
and prime numbers, my friend gives it one more try,
this time affecting a conspiratorial whisper,
  
OK Grandpa, what’s the number that comes  just before
Infinity ?

 

Lynn P. Elwell is a retired research scientist and teacher.  He has had poems published in over a dozen literary journals including: Poem, Blue Unicorn,  the Oyez Review,  Passages North,  Ship of Fools, and the Homestead Review.

Fisher King

 
A giant egret paces along cliff edge,
observes subtle tides, cold slap of water,
seeks squirming grail, swarming anchovies.

He turns a golden eye to floating kelp,
detects moving flashes of silver, spears fish
from dark seaweed where they’ve been hiding

Shivering in anticipation,
the albino angler throws back his head,
brunch leisurely swallowed.

"Joyce used to say there are no coincidences, and the longer I live, the more I see this." 

~Judy Liese talking about Joyce Uhlir

 

Post Drizzle Prism

For months we have begged stubborn heavens to open,
forgive us our trespasses, gift us with moisture.
Now, in the aftermath of this season’s first downpour,
we are dazzled by drizzle, prismatic reflections.

Sunlight bends around rain, refracts primary colors.
A rainbow hangs against lavender fogbanks.
Beneath its fading arch, a dolphin pod circles.
Silver dorsal fins dissect incoming waves.

Good luck totems dominate hazy horizon,
delight undeterred, morning walkers.
Is this absolution or brief relief?
Has drought finally broken?