CSPS Poetry Letter No. 4, 2022, Part 1 - Featured Poets Kathi Stafford and Susan Rogers

Ladybug Luminous by Susan Rogers

 The CSPS Poetry Letter No. 4 of 2022 included six poems nominated for Pushcart Prizes (published here in December), as well as two featured poets, Kathi Stafford and Susan Rogers.  The book reviews published in the Poetry Letter 4/2022 will be posted separately.

FEATURED POET - KATHI STAFFORD

Kathi Stafford is the author of Blank Check, a poetry collection, and co-editor and contributing author of Grateful Conversations, an anthology of Los Angeles poets. She previously served as Poetry Editor and Senior Editor for Southern California Review for many years. Her poetry, reviews and interviews have been published in many journals, such as Rattle, Hiram Poetry Review, Connecticut River Review, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, and Southern California Review. Her poetry has been anthologized in Chopin and Cherries and Sea of Alone: Poems for Hitchcock. Stafford is a corporate attorney who is also a  violinist with Brookwood Strings and a banjo player and alto for the Staffords, a bluegrass band.

EARTH

March 1st     Rabbit rabbit 

Rabbit doesn’t help this time      In a hospital

Room I’m on the floor      Day of my disaster

Cancer in gut     Foundations of earth and my

Life laid bare       Bible on the nightstand

Cords of death pull tight at 2 am       I am so

Alone       the disease my powerful enemy

I am on a fine line in the dirt      I’m only mud

In this moment    on an edge between being and

Nonbeing

   Nothing left and yet

Supreme love     reaches down  rescues me

Cords loosened   I still breathe air mixes with

Dust      He brings me into a spacious place of

Beauty    Ferns orchids lantana spring up under

These feet     the day of rescue and

Clean hands lifted in praise for eternity

THE SPACE BETWEEN

On the edge of sleep, here sits the yes

In the magic space between now and maybe

Between the star and its implosion   I find 

Joy too much    Music the bridge between

Galaxy’s edge and this mild heart of mind

Opposite sides of the glass

I wish for a tiny denouement

I kiss the raccoon and he turns into a

Fish     Or a ruddy prince

He sniffs the air     On his hind legs

He wants in    He thinks he wants to be tamed

If he only knew 

Waiting for Us by Maja Trochimczyk 

BLANK CHECK

One year ago today: My first go 

At radiation. The tech with his arms

Flu of blue tattoos and scars eases me 

Into place. The quiet clicking

Machine drones on as I hold still

In its shadow. A thin red light razors

Below my skin, down to an ocean of

Cells and fear. In a few weeks, my skin will

Scale off—each strip delicate

And lacy. So individual, each layer

With its sheer story of my past. Some women

Much stronger than I am

Thirty-three times I go home after and burrow

Into sleep, so hard and final.

I win the lottery. One year come

And gone

With no new lumps. This is a gift 

And a wonder yo me. Will there always be

A blank check

Made out 

To future scars?

May I never ask the right questions.

There’s a tale for every traveler.

The tech guy talks about his newborn,

Jimmy, three months old, while shines

With joy. Jimmy almost in the room with us

Talcum powdered and fresh

The man is trying to distract me.

I laugh and

Take it all in.

My pain held up on all four corners

By the prayers lifted by my saints, my friends, toward

Gentle sky, oh Metta, oh peace of my Lord.   

    

BANYAN

I drive toward the airport   3 am in a hot

Bengalaru night          I drive past a park

Full of banyan trees     where one man 

Sits beneath the         Strangler fig

Shared with a        swarm of wasps

No fruit without the sting     He is wrapped in

White robes       His sweat precious as he achieves

Nirvana        The columns of the trunk ricketed and

Etched with        Many rivers of joy in this

National tree of India 

Elliptical leaves  with seeds spread 

By birds  frugivores soaring through 

Branches and with mutual bliss

Move the fruit         Far from the parent

The man leaves behind his robes

For his next ascension

Hill Clouds by Maja Trochimczyk

PSALM 30 DIVIDED AND CUT

Thou has lifted me

Thou has lifted me

And my foes have not rejoiced over me

Thou has lifted

I cried unto you

Cried unto you

Thou hast healed me

Pulled out the cancer cells

By surgeon hands

Thou hast healed me

You brought my soul out 

You brought this soul

Out from the grave  kept me from the pit

At 2 am on the March morning when my soul 

Almost slid away     I felt it going

Sing Give thanks at the remembrance 

Of His holiness

His gift of life

Weeping lasts a night

But with morning comes joy

I cried to Thee Lord

And in the morning you gave

Joy. Peace. My soul.

You turned my mourning into dancing and    

        gladness

Thank you forever for this extra day to see 

The precious granddaughter faces you gave me.

BORDERLAND

I am on the edge of old and older

My land pushes up to his land

In the field     three horses   sisters

And one pony.        In the land next door they

Wait next to the gathered trees     In sacred shade

One kneels to me     Do they remember apples

I brought them last spring?  I forget their names

Except for Bear       The little one black and

Impetuous.      One suffers from the pain that

Will not end while       Three witches stir their

Cauldron in the borderland  Six geese float at pond’s edge

Under Oaks and slash pines and two crows

Fly to them         for no known purpose.

Jasmine on the gate      Still blooms 

Its scent and whiteness        Bring me home

Help me find level ground

I’m dizzy these days

Ground beside the blue red roses  a cliche of beauty

GLAD HIVE

A tablespoon of honey and Aunt Ruth makes me

Swallow the comb  my throat 

Tickles.    Tiny wings scratch me close

Spit out the wax when she’s not looking

My little bee might miss his sisters     Or not

Let’s call him Fred for now      From Glad Hive

Next day Auntie steers the station wagon

Halfway across Oklahoma  encased in teak

Over to Glass Mountains. Though they are barely a

Mesa but we don’t argue    Free buzzes around

And my toe hurts

But I keep still

Auntie glows on the crest transformed

We scoot down the hill on our butts all the way

My cousins and I build an altar    One stone for each

Tribe    Near Rattlesnake Lake

Plains   Spread out every which way in a

Season of tall grass     

And barley rustling in the vicious

Wind where I am simply myself.   

 A very small girl in a big prairie.

Fuji Suddenly by Susan Rogers

FEATURED POET - SUSAN ROGERS

Susan Rogers considers poetry vehicles for light. She’s a practitioner of Sukyo Mahikari—a spiritual practice promoting positivity. In 2013, 2017 she received nominations for Pushcart Prizes. She’s co editor of A Sonic Boom of Stars and was one of four international judges for the 8th Rabindranath Tagore Award.  https://www.loispjones.com/susan-rogers. Publication Credits: “Numbers,” Kyoto Journal, Issue 92; “Longing for October,” Kyoto Journal, Issue 81; “A Field of Winter Grass,” Interlitq: California Poets Part 2; “The Origin is One,” Saint Julian Press, 2012; “Grass” and “Grateful Conversations,”  Grateful Conversations, 2018; “Return to Muir Woods,” Altadena Poetry Review, 2019; “Sunflowers in Your Hand,” Quill & Parchment, May 2019.

GRATEFUL CONVERSATIONS 

Everything we have we’re given

in love to use in love, in grace.

There is nothing we alone have written.

We are but a conversation

of light, through this exchange we trace

everything we have. We’re given

sour and sweet, lemon, raisin

and grain to bind them into place—

there is nothing we alone have written.

We eat cakes but have forgotten

their origin. We have erased

everything. We have, we’re given

we look, we laugh, we love, we listen.

We welcome gifts we embrace.

Yet there is nothing we alone have written.

Watch sunset turn to a ribbon.

Remember honey and its taste.

Everything we have we’re given.

There is nothing we alone have written.

A FIELD OF WINTER GRASS

  ~ after a photograph by Peter Sheffler

      “Winter Field Grasses, Far Away Point, Maryland”

To be still in the middle of chaos

to be singular in the midst of multiplicity

to be a line in a series of lines

a note in a chorus, a voice in the marsh

a reed in a tangle of stalks

to be woven in a field of complexity

yet still a thread, an arrow, a direction

an intention, a clear heart, a hidden blade

a crisscross of here and there, a slender

reaching strand of light, an intersection

of possibility a dance of detail, a piece of

the weave, a pattern of everything,

a field of winter grass.

Raindrops and Reflections by Susan Rogers

THE ORIGIN IS ONE

                      for Kotama Okada

 

The dove knows the way

follow her.

Your heart knows the way

listen well.

 

Within your deepest self

are wings of light.

They cover the earth

with waves of love.

 

Do you remember?

You once knew.

 

Stand in the warmth

of sunlight and recall.

 The origin of the world

is one.

 

The origin of religions

is one.

 

The origin of all

humankind is one.

 

Circle back.

Imagine the great will

 

of all things

stirring in your fingers.

 

Reach out your arms

and open your palms

 

to the sky.

It is time.

Paradise Sky by Susan Rogers

 

NUMBERS

When she thinks of her husband,

she thinks of a half-moon carrying a shadow half behind.

The moon never loses fullness,

even if it is draped by night.

Once she could see the moon's unsevered disc,

no matter what portion lit the sky, and in its one, cool light 

complete herself. Now she finds only broken shapes, 

sees semi-circles separated.  She does not know how

to live in two places at a time. For three or four months 

she thought she could be the sky 

suspended in space above their cities. 

But it has been five or six years; he has not appeared.

She feels hollowed like air inside a weightless cloud. 

Seven days a week, she composes letters in her head, 

but cannot find eight lines to explain emptiness. 

Her nine koi fish swim in bright scaled circles in the pond 

They cannot distract her. She thinks again about walking

ten miles to the pavilion, but has walked this road 

a hundred times before, envisioned him returning 

a thousand times and more. Today, it seems 

ten thousand miles separate them.

If she knew the words, the numbers, she would write a poem.

She thinks of ancient China, of Zou Wenjun

who waited for her husband at a pavilion

when he was sent to the capitol for months which spun

into years. Zou Wenjun waited spinning words and tears 

into a numbered verse and when her husband sought divorce

showed him the poem. Greatly moved, he changed his mind.

Where in this ordered universe can she find

the words to fill a heart? She will have to start again,

relearn the edges of a circle, reclaim the white light

     of her first moon.

GRASS

Yesterday, someone I know

Looked through me

like I wasn’t there,

as if I were a field of air,

insubstantial and invisible.

Today, I think of my great teacher

who said,

 “Become a practitioner of genuine humility,”

and a modern saint who said,

 “A cyclone can destroy the mightiest of trees,

but even a cyclone cannot touch the grass.

This is the greatness of humility.”

So today I have decided to become like grass,

which needs no encouragement

but water, sun and sky,

which is invisible, often, as we walk by,

a genuine practitioner of humility.

It is true the grass is sometimes mowed;

but that just keeps it safe from storms,

close to the ground, close to you.

Oh God of all things great and small,

cyclone, trees, dirt,

let me strive to always be like grass,

cool comfort for the earth.

So that children may run through me,

barefoot on a summer day

and I may greet them, or catch them if they fall,

soft and green and sweet, with no resistance        

         to their play,

almost invisible, pure reason for their joy

Japanese Maples by Susan Rogers

RETURN TO MUIR WOODS

In the cathedral of trees

sunlight christens moss-grown branches—

a sacrament.

I breathe in 

air of clear intention

purified, re-written.

In the cathedral of trees

I smile at each person I pass

sharing the wisdom of woods.

So many voices mingle:

English, French, Italian, Farsi.

Each harmonized in hope.

I caress a broken trunk on its side

a moment of camaraderie

thanking it for pointing me to sky.

In the cathedral of trees

I walk with you 

each tree 

a testament I read now

and save for later.

I do not know

if the path through

is straight or a loop

that circles back to myself.

Either way I return.

Muir Woods by Susan Rogers

SUNFLOWERS IN YOUR HAND

I wonder if I will recognize you

when you return

in a different form.

I like to think your breath

so intimately part of mine

that when you are reborn

even if you wear

white organza as a bride,

or the black habit of a nun,

if you appear much younger

than you were

in a sweater striped in cyan blue

with wild sunflowers in your hand

I will remember you,

just as I remember the shine

of a sun dazzled stream

after it’s gone dry, the rhythm

of staccato rain when I swing

my hammock under cloudless skies,

or the sound of laughter

in a dream of exquisite joy.

Even if you choose to be my cat,

a hummingbird, a bright scaled koi.

And if you are born in another country,

don’t speak words I understand

if you are not female this time

but instead a boy, I hope there will be

some note of you that sings,

your music indisputably

through the differences of then and now,

so I will know you are the one

that it’s you come back

in whatever form you come.