Poem from Here: Guest Poet Gor Yaswen
WINDROAR
Wind, roar 'round our roofs;
tumble down tonite
from this mammoth sky
to make curtains flail
over Man's billion beds,
in whatever nooks from dark
you find us in.
Blow your swollen song
to our asleep ears
that we might hear:
of the start-less epic
of this murmured Earth;
of this vast dream
we are lost within;
of the fluttered smallness
of our brief flames
scattered in this All-ness.
Now, Wind,
while Mind sleeps;
speak what Mind won’t hear,
to That beneath it.
- gor yaswen
Poem from Here: Guest Poet Lee Slonimsky
INNOCENT
I've been an atom deep inside an oak
for near a century now. But this wind
is threatening, the severing kind, and. . .
crack! The trunk is split; I'm fee to look
at lightning, red clouds, summer's thrash at dusk.
At peace, I bask in weather, gazing up
even when rain begins to fall. "Relax,"
I tell my gnat-electrons, "take your loops
as slow as moonrise - we can sail the air
now that our tree is halved, and glide to Rome
or Santa Fe or Mars; a star's not far -
or we can stay and call this gnarled stump home."
An oak's a cell of beauty; who could have known
its sad limits? I love our freedom so.
from Logician of the Wind, © 2012 Lee Slonimsky
Lee will be reading Saturday, January 26, 7 pm at Sebastopol Gallery.
Poem from Here: Guest Poet Bob Engel
Grandfather Answers
Salamander Camp, August 2008
for Olivia Corson
I ask, “What is held when we hold on too tightly?”
Say something more, Grandfather, than just,
The trees hold nothing,
giving it all to the sky.
Say instead,
The varieties of greens and shadows
of these leaves, these descending, overlapping branches
are the texture of your interior.
When they cut you open they will not find
an anatomy of gray and red. You will not be blood
and sludge. Instead, they will find green needles,
brown twigs, and a single blue stone resting in
moss in the center of your chest, there -
just beneath that place where you
now lay your palm as you approach me and
ask me this question.
Grandfather pauses, regarding me with that silent gaze
he has held now for over eighty years.
If he could speak, he would say,
Mysteries are as common as crows.
-Bob Engel
Poem from Here: Guest Poet Frederick Smock
OG SKOGEN
Every forest has
a central tree,
one the whole forest
leans on.
You may not
be able to find it.
It lives deep
in the heart.
It may even have
fallen, years
ago, but its memory
is that strong.
Frederick Smock
(Og Skogen means "the forest" or "the pines" in Norwegian.)
reprinted with author's permission from About Place Journal
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Poem from Here: Guest Poet Lee Slonimsky
REFUSAL
This world of wounds may need a savior now,
but he won't be the one - no taste for crowds,
or hollow shimmer of sudden acclaim -
he doesn't care how many know his name.
Last night's beseechers gone, he sits and broods -
let self-importants lead - he must follow
dawn sun up slow trajectory, oak trees
whose pacifism guides a mild wet breeze,
an ant, a beetle, work, swooping swallows,
and all the world that's not at war. Ignore
the dazzle of illusory esteem.
Greek wounds could heal but he thinks, at the core,
humanity's violent. As flowers sway,
better to just observe a slow new day.
- from Logician of the Wind, © 2012 Lee Slonimsky
Lee will be reading with me at Sebastopol Gallery, 150 North Main, on Saturday, September 28, 2 pm.

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Poem from Here: Guest Poet Sal Martinez
“Paashitham”
When I see photos of smiling faces
on walls or Facebook
I ask myself: What was the joke?
Smiling is a genuine gift
that people of a single mother posses.
Most photos that mimic this gift
are not ones after a good joke,
a ridiculous fall out of a chair,
out of the comfort of an infant,
or the love of a thousand moons.
They are ones after “cheese,”
a command, a fabric of happiness
with designs to proves its worth
without the wind to tell its story.
Where is the gift in a trick of the mouth
frozen in the burn of the camera’s flash?
What is known is the image alone,
the rest is a fairytale…
Maybe that’s why Tusanka Witco didn’t want his “shadow” taken.
He had foreseen something
in the camera and the Man behind it
that would change his Oglala people, and tribes like mine,
for the rest of their cultural lives.
The kind that changes fishermen into war chiefs, and war chiefs
into mascots.
San Martinez
Sal Martinez will be reading at Poetry Celebrating the Pomo Way at Coffee Catz on Sunday, October 27, 1-3 pm. This event is part of Pomo Honoring Month.
San Martinez is a proud member of the Manchester/Point Arena Band of Pomo Indians. He is a husband and a father to one son. His family currently resides in Modoc County, Alturas, CA. He works as a Security Guard at the Desert Rose Casino and has been an employee for five years. This poem first appeared in Misfit Magazine.