Touchstone3

A Winter Chore - Burning Brush

My battle is a silent one, broken only
By crackling and by snapping, as the flames consume
Trash, and the papers. The field is lonely.
I pile dead branches where the flames make room.

Under the leaping light the dead cave yawns.
Gray with ashes: dead as hope.
There where the heat is
Dried twigs go:
There where the hollow is
New flame spawns.

I came to battle with the brush for burning;
To stir old limbs to a warmer pace;
Clear from my senses a clutter and yearning
By burning trash in an open place.

~Edith Greene

An Outside Chance

I would like to get through
to a certain person and
help him to clean up his life
but I know he is
too self-serving to care.

He doesn't have a conscience
to speak of. He got rid of it
a long time ago and devoted
himself to a long chain of bottles.

Too many times I have tried
and failed.
Too often I have thought, if only.

Who knows?
Some day maybe.
I believe in hope.

~Henry Butler

Dreams in the 1950s

Lillian Hellman crouched in the attic
of despair, her closet drama closed,
no hope of getting out of the red
scare, no chance of forgetting her dream
of creating stage worlds -
I opened my S & H Idea Book
after making my father stop
his two-toned DeSoto at gas stations
that gave the stamps. I now knew
that 5 1/2 books for the signed
genuine cowhide Roger Marris glove
was impossible. Even a pole lamp
with swivel bullets at 3 books
would take more than my short
childhood. Although I had hid
my father's cigars to make him stop
I decided use my one full book
of S & H stamps for a brushed
chrome Zippo lighter. I had
learned my role in a world
that denied Jewish dramatists
their rights to people a stage.

~Ian Veitenheimer

Life Under The Snow

The best love grows as slowly as the snow melts;
after a while ? .a century ? eon! ?
of absolutely nothing going on,
the final argument for saying No melts,
flowers appear, and robins on the lawn.
Until that time, the whole prospect that seemed
no more substantial than a something dreamed
becomes a plan impatient to be done.
Beneath the surface crust seasons can turn
and start developing the fantasies
of happenings still hidden from the eyes,
choices to think about, and facts to learn;
then with bare earth the hand of a new age
emerges from the ground, and turns a page.

~Frank Greene

Winter Melt

Brown branches of bushes
topped with fresh snowflakes
look like vanilla ice cream
trickling down the sides
of waffled sugar cones

~Aileen Michaelsk Greene