Issue 9

January 2012

Cover Photo © 2005 “72146410” by jessicafm - under the Creative Commons - Attribution 2.0 License.

Many people and things touch us in our lives, but sometimes we feel even more deeply the impact of absence.

Healing comes like an unexpected friend at the end of a walk through days and nights of loneliness and grief.  What prompts the heart to let go, to live, and to never forget?

Like a nail on the wall that once held a beloved's portrait, the simplest of things can be transformed into the hope of a new beginning - a new place to hang onto the gifts of life.

In the end, you know her

by the outline on the wall.

Fred Longworth

She’s lost -- adrift like flotsam on the waves

while slipping backward to familiar past

Eira Needham

if the old man died that evening,

frost covered, from cold,

there would be no new birth

in the spring

Tim Falkenberg

Hold on or let go? Resist or rest

in that common bed where

we dream ourselves asleep?

Risa Denenberg

Awake from your sleep

and hide your eyes

never more

Jordan Grumet

So when I heard her Monarch

take to the air,

I forgot about my teeth

and smiled up at her.

Donal Mahoney

I long to be a flying daredevil on a trapeze –

not this other kind of hanging on.

Julie Ebin

She knew she would trade

the new horizons

to recapture the old,

foreshortened landscape,

if only she could.

Joyce E. Hicks