After the wildflowers bare their fragile faces, Lacing the green meadows with mystic purples And eruptive shades of pink and orange; Before the autumn rains tumble from gray clouds Scudding low in the skies To soak the sun-crisped grasses; Between those hospitable seasons Comes the elemental scourge of fire. Sparked by dry lighting or power […]
Poetry Corner: Mary Susan Gast “Fire Haze”
Dawn came heavy-lidded, Puffy-eyed with smoke, The sapphire sky tarred with ash, The light an anxious yellowed gray.
Poetry Corner: Mary Susan Gast “Power Dynamics”
It was in the air, Borne on the currents Of hope and history, Those self-evident truths Of equality and rights. It was on the rise, This notion that power Is invested in the people, That governments Draw their powers from the consent Of the governed. It was on the wing, The recognition of the turns […]
Poetry Corner: Mary Susan Gast “The Season’s Greetings”
This is the season Of riotous angels deranging the skies With songs of peace and goodwill. This is the season When past and present swirl Like snowflakes blown across time’s boundaries. This is the season When little children lead us Into mystery and clarity. This is the season Of dogged hope That love among us […]
Poetry Corner: Mary Susan Gast “Halloween”
Impertinently knocking on death’s door riding the rafts of fantasy darting as night melds with day between the darkness and the light The youngest and most gleeful among us tear through the quiet streets a tumble of magpies, a jabber of blackbirds, rapt and wrapped in fabrics diaphonous, wooly, or diabolical playing gap-toothed grinning tag […]
Poetry Corner: Mary Susan Gast “September in the Northern Hemisphere
In wistful September We descend From summer’s summit of light To the dreadful balance Of the precarious Equinox. From there we catch the zip-line Into the sway of night. Mary Susan Gast is a member of Benicia’s First Tuesday Poetry Group
Poetry Corner: Mary Susan Gast “August Sky”
August is big time. Meteors streak the heavens, Illuminating Our own space travel, Through the cosmos. Crickets string iridescent beads of song in the stillness. Marvelous Cygnus stretches overhead, Soaring, Amid the spiraling delicacy of pastel nebulae. Bright Vega, Modestly hugging the horizon just weeks ago, Now strides To the pinnacle Of the firmament. Timeless […]
Poetry Corner: “Joel’s Passing” by Mary Susan Gast
“So, I may have been wrong after all – this damn cancer may indeed be the death of me.” -Joel Fallon, in an email of June 30, 2016 He died on the morning of August 11. That night, meteor showers dazzled the skies: The Perseids, at their peak. No reason to doubt that Joel hitched […]
Poetry Corner: “Joel’s Poetry” by Mary Susan Gast
It was the voice AND what he said That echo, that linger. The voice all deep and ready To use words honed to the point Of decisive descriptive endurance. He beckoned mismatched images to Sidle up to one another: Spaghetti and spaghetti straps, A golden owl and a bound foot, Key lime pie and [oh […]
20 years later: Reflections on the end of apartheid and rebirth of South Africa
TWENTY YEARS AGO, AS THE MINUTES DRIFTED across the threshold of midnight and April 26 became April 27, a new flag was raised over South Africa. The old tricolor, with its static layering of three wide stripes, was lowered, and in its place rose a six-colored banner that seemed to lunge into the future. The […]