For the inner ear, the voice of the ves­sel of silence is an embrace
felt by an infi­nite num­ber of scribes.
It is my wish to offer here an oasis of present day poetic
pens.

Each month i shall invite new poets to breathe with, and they in
turn will bring guests of their own.

Poetry Cor­ner at TIFERET has evolved out of Donna Stein’s
enthu­si­asm to nur­ture the spirit of beauty in all its forms.

silent lotus

Feb­ru­ary 2011 Silent Lotus’ Selected
Poets’

Rick Stans­berger

and his guest Michelle Beth Cronk

Lisa Starr

and her guest Cole­man Barks

Rick
Stansberger

Sun­set Fire, Moun­tain, Rain

Cloud-filled gul­leys.
A killing ground– flame
smoke, steam — so

steep the fire crews
let this one burn.
Smells like incense

from ten miles away
looks like Shangri-la,
mind-road to Buddha-land

sun­set pour­ing straight
into those clouds
then straight back out.

2 AM in the Sea­son of Storms

Tiger tonight

growls among mountains.

The bruja

who becomes a cat to cross a road,

the duende

who sprouts from mesquite black,

they hear it too.

They and I,

greedy for the sound.

Rick Stans­berger has been pub­lish­ing here and there since 1965. His most recent col­lec­tion of poems, Stark, Ohio, was pub­lished in 2010 by TMJF Pub­lish­ing. He resides in Sil­ver City, New Mex­ico, where he teaches writ­ing and main­tains sev­eral blogs. sleepswithbear.wordpress.com Rick can be reached at: [email protected]

Michelle Beth Cronk

Grief

One day you will be gone
and I will fall quietly,

like rain, with no pref­er­ence
for my land­ing place.
　

Michelle Beth Cronk lives in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia with her hus­band and chil­dren. She is a con­trib­u­tor and edi­tor to the online com­mu­nity at PoetryCircle.com and is fin­ish­ing up her first man­u­script. She has var­i­ous work pub­lished here and there online at jour­nals includ­ing Lock Raven Review, Tryst, eli­mae, and Eclec­tica. She is also very pleased and hon­ored to be fea­tured with Rick Stans­berger, who “gets” her poems and is a con­stant source of sup­port and encouragement.

Lisa
Starr

Sand­pipers, Again

I went back to the sand­pipers today—
it’s been a while.
Six of them, or
was it twenty? Never mat­ters;
some­how we all know when a meet­ing
has been called,
some­how we all know
exactly
when the surf will start
toss­ing back
its wild sil­ver hair.

One time I was aston­ished
to find them wait­ing for me
on the beach in New­port.
It was so quiet
it was like rain,
with­out the rain.
I wasn’t plan­ning it
my car just brought me there,
a most uncom­mon thing—
it’s not that kind of car
but there we were, alone on a beach.

It almost made me giddy,
like today,
just now.
I’d for­got­ten how much
I need them.
Like me they were laugh­ing and
sput­ter­ing about the beauty.
A few of them couldn’t help it
and just kept throw­ing their small bod­ies
again and again
into the wild, white water.

Because

Lately she’s been falling in love every­where—
at the mar­ket, in the phar­macy, always in the cafe­te­ria
slid­ing her tray over the metal rails,
last week with the hands of the atten­dant at a gas sta­tion.
It’s not right, she knows, but still, she can’t help it.
Some­times it hap­pens all day long.

Yes­ter­day at the cam­pus it was every­thing again—
The way the post­mas­ter, on lunch break, went whistling past,
or how the fris­bee play­ers sing the quad.
The way some stu­dents stay after class, that usu­ally gets her.
Cashiers, peo­ple who sing at stop lights—all fair game.
Cab drivers—forget it.

With ice cream scoop­ers, with their lit­tle paper hats,
it is often love at first sight,
and she will never for­get the boy at the sand­wich shop—
the way he said “miss, would you like any­thing to drink?”
to the 80-year-old woman in front of her,
then when it was her turn said “Ma’am” instead.

Later today, blessed by all this lov­ing
she will make some tea and play a vio­lin con­certo
for her dog who is deaf.
She will play the music as loud as it will go
because she can, and because some­how, he’ll hear it
and he will stand on the porch of the fine yel­low house,
glowing.

She will be all choked up
because the lawn chairs
have never been this white before
and because, tired ears flap­ping
in a soft Autumn breeze,
the old dog will bark back his joy.

An inn-keeper, a mother, a bas­ket­ball coach and a teacher, Lisa Starr, Rhode Island’s Poet Lau­re­ate, divides her time among a vari­ety of inter­ests, her chil­dren, and her pas­sion for poetry. She is a two-time recip­i­ent of the R.I. Fel­low­ship for Poetry. In her capac­ity as Poet Lau­re­ate, Starr has estab­lished dozens of poetry cir­cles in typ­i­cally mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. She is a proud and found­ing mem­ber of Ocean State Poets, a team of vol­un­teers that trav­els around the state, shar­ing poetry at facil­i­ties for the elderly, schools, hos­pi­tals, group homes, libraries, the prison, and agen­cies for chil­dren and adults with severe men­tal and phys­i­cal disabilities. In April of 2009 Starr assem­bled more than a dozen US State Poets Lau­re­ate in Rhode Island for Poetry for Hope, a series of read­ings, work­shops, and pub­lic forums. The poets worked with more than 7,000 Rhode Islanders (most of them stu­dents and teach­ers) dur­ing the 5-day poetry sweep. Starr’s third col­lec­tion of poems, Mad With Yel­low, was pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber, 2008. She is the author of two other books: This Place Here (2001) and Days of Dogs and Drift­wood (1993). A poet by choice and an innkeeper by neces­sity, Starr lives in and oper­ates the Hygeia House, a 10-room inn on Block Island which is also home to the Block Island Poetry Project, Starr’s nation­ally acclaimed human­i­ties series, now in its 8th year. The bright­est lights of her life are her two chil­dren, Orrin (14) and Millie(13) her beloved dog, Brother, and Jewel, her wild, new lit­tle cat. When time per­mits, she writes her heart out. [email protected] http://www.bipoetryproject.com/

Cole­man Barks

A Sky-Opening

Now this light,
last day of June 2010,
sun going down, gone down,
but with a glow out the east win­dow
so strong an over­all sur­round,
hard rain­storm just over,
pink­ish blue, gold sky every­where one glow,
remind­ing me again how it was in my child­hood,
how it still is,
the way a change in light and air
makes you have to walk out­side
to try to get closer to it
out in the yard or in the street
under a sky-opening through the trees.

Born in 1937 in Chat­tanooga, Ten­nessee and edu­cated at the Univ. of North Car­olina (BA 1959; PhD 1968) and at the Univ. of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (MA 1961), Cole­man Barks has since 1977 col­lab­o­rated with var­i­ous schol­ars of the Per­sian lan­guage (most notably, John Moyne) to bring over into Amer­i­can free verse the poetry of the 13th Cen­tury mys­tic, Jelalud­din Rumi. This work has resulted in twenty-one vol­umes, includ­ing the best­selling Essen­tial Rumi in 1995, two appear­ances on Bill Moy­ers’ PBS spe­cials, and inclu­sion in the pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Anthol­ogy of World Mas­ter­pieces. The Rumi trans­la­tions have sold over a mil­lion copies. It is claimed that over the last fif­teen years Rumi has been the most-read poet in the United States. In Octo­ber 2010 Harper­One pub­lished RUMI: THE BIG RED BOOK, which col­lects all of the work on Rumi’s ghaz­als and rubai that he has done over the past thirty-four years. Dr. Barks taught Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture and Cre­ative Writ­ing at var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties for thirty-four years, and has pub­lished seven vol­umes of his own poetry. The Univ. of Geor­gia Press pub­lished WINTER SKY: Poems 1968–2008 in Sep­tem­ber of 2008. In 2004 he received the Juliet Hol­lis­ter Award for his work in the inter­faith area. In March 2005 the US State Dept. sent him to Afghanistan as the first vis­it­ing speaker there in twenty-five years. In May of 2006 he was awarded an hon­orary doc­tor­ate by the Uni­ver­sity of Tehran. In 2009 he was inducted into the Geor­gia Writ­ers Hall of Fame. He is now retired Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at the Univ. of Geor­gia in Athens. He has two grown sons and four grand­chil­dren, all of whom live near him in Athens, Geor­gia. http://www.colemanbarks.com/

Poetry Cor­ner Monthly Archives

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … JANUARY 2011

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … DECEMBER 2010

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … NOVEMBER 2010

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … OCTOBER 2010

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … SEPTEMBER 2010

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … AUGUST 2010

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … JUNE 2010

POETRY
CORNER by silent lotus … MAY 2010