Father Mississippi: A Prayer by Richard Weaver

Bless these ferns that struggle to lift their heads
in a world where temptation

is a bulldozer and man is blind to everything
that doesn’t bite him first. And bless

the four-legged starfish who crawls across the reef
only to be eaten, and rejoice in the kingdom of salt.

Bring peace down
upon all those who glow in this dark

so that we might see their way.
And allow the beached dolphin one last glimpse

of the daymoon before it too fades into blue.
Let the treefrogs sing their song of this earth.

And the earth turn this flesh
back to shapeless clay.



-Previously published in The Cape Rock

Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Confessions of a Beachcomber by Richard Weaver

If I wake early I walk
toward the sun; if late, away.
I accept what the island provides.
Obvious things I leave:
shells, numinous and ordinary.
driftwood--it burns faster
than I can carry it to camp.
But always there are surprises:
a pair of shoes came in one day, my size!
A bottle of port wine.
A pair of unattached wings.
Lemons, onions, an alligator pear, toys.
One day a book washed in --
The Pageant of Literature-
and a pair of trousers. My size.
And once, for seven or eight miles
the beach was green with banana stalks.
All the animals on the island
joined me in the feast.
I took my share, leaving the rest
for the grackles and crabs,
the few raccoons who won’t
wait for them to ripen.



-Previously published in Underfoot Poetry



Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Absence by Steve Klepetar

If only the wind had leaned in with a whisper,
instead of slamming the door like a judge.
If only the tea had steeped a little longer,
and the sparrow hadn’t struck the glass.
You might have lingered by the stove,
watching steam rise like old secrets.
We could have wandered to the orchard,
where dusk gathers in the branches like sleep.
If only I had remembered what you said
about time, how it folds like a napkin,
never straight. But your eyes were already
turning toward the dark shape of the road.
Now your absence sits in my chair
each morning, quiet as a coat filled with rain.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual. His poems have received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Beyond the Frame by Ann Leamon

The woman lies alone in the field—
you’ve seen the painting—peering
over the horizon. The gray, weathered
house looms behind her, overwhelms her fragile
life. Did she really drag herself
out to the field? Why? Maybe for the same reason
my mother dragged the four of us back then:
to pick blueberries.

We packed a lunch, spent the day. Mom
picked berries, we climbed the rocks
along the cove, water cold
and green and clear as our futures seemed to be.

As the sun slipped low, Mom’s buckets full
of berries for jam and winter muffins,
we went to the steep hill
you can’t see in the painting,
above the little graveyard, and threw ourselves
down to roll,
roll,
roll,
arms and legs flying, shrieking
with delighted terror and surprise, to end
at the bottom dizzy, covered with twigs and leaves.

Stumbling, sunburned, sleepy—
Mom piled us in the station wagon for
the long drive home. The berries are still there,
I hear, and Christina hangs in the museum,
looking out of her frame to that hill,
to the graveyard at the bottom,
where she will be buried.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.

Love Song in Silence by Ann Leamon

Four days before Christmas,
          he died.

She wrapped herself
          in silence.

No need for that constant stream
of one-sided
conversation,
explanation,
commentary,
description,
documentation,
the unending, inevitable questions
answered
          and answered
                    and answered again.
How often can you speak the time, the day, your name?

Few responsibilities now
except the fire,
children busy with the farm,
sunlight streaming warm through the
skylight, its bright square trudging
across the tattered carpet with the hours.

Why speak?
No one would answer.

The doctor ordered, “You must speak.” The brain contracts
without words.

Now, she drinks her tea
and reads aloud her poetry
to the husband
who left her one week
before their 64th anniversary,
who waits, not far, with their lost beloveds,
who understands
what she’s saying,
with words and without.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.