Too Young To Know

It’s curious about the massed communicants,

not the few tied and suited boys, especially,

but the virginally, wedding-gowned girls

in lace and taffeta, prim alabaster angels

now pledged, going steady with the Church.

 

Are they truly knowledgeable at their age

to know right from wrong and to distinguish

heaven’s wine and manna from fruits of evil?

 

Mass ends and the newly sated pass

slowly, processing down the aisle;

at least one pre-nun, guided between

beaming parents, head tilted back, eyes

tight shut, hands still clasped in devotion,

is graced by the faith of incomprehension.

 

by Richard Hartwell

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather be still tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon.

The Season Turns

Bones of the trees

are showing now,

the terrible light.

 

Darkness is all

the cold holds, which

shivers out of sight.

 

The wind carries

on with sadness,

yet leaves no promise.

 

We hope for more

at summer’s end.

All we have is this.

 

by Tom Montag

 

Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. He is a contributing writer at Verse-Virtual and in 2015 was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August). Other poems are found at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Provo Canyon Review, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.

Mark Danowsky

Becoming Aware of the Tide

 

Just today I feel older

 

Driving to the vet

 

Driving 17 miles for a hat I left behind

at a monthly meeting

 

Listening to a folk-rock album

awash in distracted serenity

 

Ebbing as soon

as it draws attention

 

 

Coleridge Stares at the Sea in Search of Star Ratings

 

We accept sponges

as they line up along our shores

 

Hate the sand-

glasses up, lying for the sun

 

Hate the strain-

bags happy to gulp burn

 

Melt over mogul diamonds buried

deep enough to require faith

 

by Mark Danowsky

 

Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Alba, Cordite, Grey Sparrow, Mobius, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday and other journals. Mark is originally from the Philadelphia area, but currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

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