This issue features
photo by Sonnenbergshots,
fiction by William Cass,
creative work by Gerald Kamens,
photo by Joni Hanebutt,
poetry by Douglas Twells,
photo by Alexandru Daniel Pavalche,
poetry by William Waters,
photo by David Wilkinson,
poetry by Diana Woodcock, and
photo by Ritu Jethani
Sonnenbergshots
Families Belong Together, San Franciso
© Sonnenbergshots.
William Cass
Whys and Wherefores
Luis had been a patient of mine for less than a year. He’d been referred to me by his primary care physician on the south side of San Diego, but he didn’t really require my care as an internist anymore. Spikes in his cholesterol levels and some unusual side effects involving his statin drugs had led to the referral, but those had been quickly remedied after med adjustments I made and a few subsequent office visits. Additionally, he’d also followed my advice about exercising more regularly and losing weight, which had contributed to his improved condition. I’d kept on seeing him for routine check-ups, but knew he no longer needed my services. The truth was, I liked him and his quiet, appreciative, positive manner after so many other encounters to the contrary. And he appeared to enjoy coming to see me. So, I hadn’t yet formally discontinued our association, although that was something I’d made up my mind I had to do.
I shared the second floor of a medical building and its waiting room with several other doctors of internal medicine and related specialties. Our offices ringed the waiting room on three walls, each with plastic windows behind which our receptionists worked. It was my practice to come into the waiting area myself to greet my patients and bring them back for their appointments, something of an oddity, I guess, that I’d borrowed from a kindly older mentor of mine with whom I’d done part of my residency. It was in that waiting area that I saw Luis and James Pernell at the same time. Luis had come quite early, as was his custom, and sat flipping through a magazine, while James slouched across from him next to his mother wearing his tattered ball cap, cell phone in hand like usual, tapping his foot to whatever music blared that afternoon from his earbuds. At the sight of the young man, I resisted an urge to scowl. James had briefly been a patient of mine, as well, but when his condition began to warrant it, I’d referred him on to a nephrologist colleague of mine whose office was on the opposite side of the waiting area. James’ mother had to have had him quite late in life because her hair was almost completely white, and she already used a cane. My next patient, a well-dressed woman about her same age, rose from her seat without even waiting for me to acknowledge her and followed me back to one of my exam rooms.
A couple of patients later, I returned and greeted Luis. Like always, he smiled and shook my hand warmly in both of his. He couldn’t have been sixty years old, yet his mahogany skin had a leathery quality to it that reminded me of an old recliner I had at home, and his grasp was just as comforting. His eyes were downturned at the outside edges and a little moist, giving them a tender, gentle quality. He called me “Doc”.
Our appointment followed its typical quick pattern. I reviewed his recent lab results on my laptop while Luis inquired about my own health and how my wife and young son were doing; he’d remarked on their identical red hair in the photo on my office desk during our initial consultation and never failed to ask after them. As I completed his check-up, he told me with some delight about a woman he’d met beforehand in line downstairs at the pharmacy whose parents, like his, had crossed over the border from the same rural area of Mexico many years ago to pick crops in the Imperial Valley.
“What are the chances?” he asked, shaking his head with his quiet smile.
“Pretty amazing,” I said and shook my own in agreement.
I confirmed with him that there had been no changes in his medical status, made a few entries to his chart on my computer, and once again saw no need to make any adjustments to his medications beyond reviewing their dosages with him. He nodded thoughtfully to everything I said.
As I readied myself to finally explain to him about not needing to see me anymore, he tilted his head, frowned, and said, “Doc, there’s something I think I’d like to do, but I could use your help with it.”
“That so?”
“Yes, I believe it is.”
I swiveled on my stool to face him more fully and told him, “All right. Shoot.”
He rubbed his chin a few times before saying, “Well, there was this young man sitting across from me in your waiting room a little while ago. I’m pretty sure it was his mother with him. So, anyway, I watched him use this kit and prick her finger, I guess to check her glucose levels. Figure she has diabetes. Watched the way he was with her, you know, how slow and careful.”
He paused then and looked at me with those eyes. My heart fell a little. A tip of cypress tree branch outside scratched against the exam room window on the spring breeze.
“So, anyway,” he continued, “the waiting room wasn’t very crowded, and I could hear them talking after he finished doing that with her about the appointment, he was waiting for with his…” Luis grimaced slightly. “His neffer…”
“His nephrologist,” I finished for him. “She’s a colleague mine.”
“Okay, fine. And after you came into the waiting room, he mentioned about having been a patient of yours.”
Although it was probably a HIPPA violation, I found myself nodding without further consideration.
Luis’s eyes brightened. “Well, that’s good. So, anyway, the two of them were talking about his appointment with your colleague, his mother and him, and it seems that young man is needing a kidney transplant. Anyway, that’s what he said. And they looked pretty glum about things. Talked about him being on some sort of long waiting list.”
I couldn’t do anything but nod. The need he described wasn’t a surprise; it’s frankly what I’d been expecting when I’d referred James to her.
“So, anyway,” Luis said. He rubbed his chin some more. “I think I’d like to do that. Give him one of mine.”
I felt my eyebrows knit. “Do you mean become a living donor? Donate one of your own kidneys to him?”
Luis’s nod was slight, but clear. “I do, yes.”
I sat and stared at him. I realized I didn’t know much about Luis beyond the few things he’d told me or were in his record. I knew he had always been single and worked as a night custodian at an elementary school. I knew that he liked woodworking. My knowledge about James was only slightly more extensive, but it was plenty. I’d seen the “Put America First” bumper sticker on his pick-up truck. And I could still remember the shock and disgust I’d felt when I recognized him in television news footage shouting angrily and shaking a “Build the Wall” placard at an anti-immigrant rally in Phoenix the previous summer.
Luis returned my gaze, nodding slowly. “Other than my cholesterol thing,” he said, “which you’ve got fixed okay now, I’m in pretty good health, so I figure I might be a fit enough donor candidate. I live alone and don’t have any family counting on me. I’ve read a person can function just fine with one kidney. So…” He shrugged, pursed his lips. “And then I found myself thinking about when I was about the same age as that young man living with my mom and helping her with her medical problems.” He chuckled, his eyes glinting at the memory. “And believe me, she had a few.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there looking at him. He was still perched on the edge of the exam table. The space was small enough that our knees almost touched. A kind of numbness crept over me as my mind toggled back and forth between Luis and James Pernell.
“So,” Luis said. “I was hoping you could tell me how to go about pursuing that. Maybe you could talk to your colleague, see if that young man and me match up right. You know my blood type, probably have his, whatever else you need. See if that’s something that could get done.”
“There’s a lot involved,” I heard myself blurting. “Tests beforehand, insurance considerations, possible side effects afterwards…”
“All that’s fine.” Luis held up his hand to cut me off. “Just hoping you can get the process started, Doc. I can take it from there.”
I studied him, blew out a breath, and said, “What you’re suggesting is pretty extraordinary. For someone who’s a complete stranger to you.”
“Not complete,” Luis replied. His voice had softened. “We shared that waiting room. I heard them talk, know that young man has this challenge, this considerable challenge, and that I can maybe help.” He paused again. “So, what do say, Doc? Can you talk to that colleague of yours, get the ball rolling?”
I knew I could. She and I had already spoken about James Pernell. She knew about his political inclinations, too; she’d told me he’d come right out and all but bragged to her about them. She was as appalled with him as I was. But, of course, those weren’t anything I could ethically share with Luis; HIPPA regulations were absolutely clear about that. I pursed my own lips, met his moist-eyed gaze, and nodded.
“Okay, then.” He slid off the edge of the exam table and offered his hands. I folded them into my own and we shook. He smiled and said, “Pass on whatever information about me to her that you need to. You know how to get ahold of me.”
“I do.”
“All right, then. Thanks.”
And just like that, he was out the exam room door and gone. The doorway stood agape, and I sat staring at its emptiness for several long moments. I hadn’t said a thing to him about him not needing to see me anymore. Instead, he’d had ideas of his own to discuss, decisions he’d made in a very short time that were beyond my understanding. I looked out the window to the parking lot below and watched Luis walk across it and climb in his car, an old sedan missing one hubcap. He backed up carefully and drove away. Almost immediately afterwards, James Pernell led his mother on her cane out to his pick-up truck a few spaces away. It had a raised suspension, and he had to help her up into it. A few moments later, it roared off, too, exhaust billowing up over his bumper sticker.
Then the parking lot sat still and motionless in the early afternoon’s clean, white light. I was vaguely aware of muffled voices from my staff in the hallway. I had other patients waiting for me, but I stayed where I was, thinking. Out in the hall, one of my staff laughed quietly and another answered in kind. The cypress branch scratched lightly at the window. Finally, I shook my head, forced myself to my feet, and prepared as best I could to go about the rest of my day.
Copyright © by William Cass.
Previously appeared in October Hill Magazine.
About the Author
William Cass has had over 325 short stories accepted for publication in a variety of literary magazines such as december, Briar Cliff Review, and Zone 3. He won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal. A nominee for both Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net anthologies, he has also received six Pushcart Prize nominations. His first short story collection, Something Like Hope & Other Stories, was published by Wising Up Press in 2020, and a second collection, Uncommon & Other Stories, was recently released by the same press. He lives in San Diego, California.
Gerald Kamens
Evergreen Place
He watches her in the Bistro, dramatically sipping her customary merlot, while the two men across the small table from her, both well-preserved codgers, look amused, but, he imagines, achingly lust after her – most likely, her goal.
Rising from her chair, Margaret waltzes over to the bar to refill her glass, and, on the way back, passes by Douglas, seated by the wall. “Just chatting them up,” she whispers in his ear, “Don’t want to blow our cover.”
“Doubt we’re a secret anymore. Anyway, I’m not jealous.”
“Of course not, my sweet. You have all my real attentions.”
“Not all, but enough. For now.”
The Bistro at Evergreen Place holds these wine-downs in the late afternoon every Friday, right before dinner, where you can, if you’re sufficiently mobile, stroll over to the bar for your beverage. If you’re not that mobile, the serving wenches, mostly recent African immigrants, will come over to pour your drinks from a cut-glass decanter, not a half-liter bottle, since Evergreen Place is indeed an elegant place. A small, discreet sign on the front lawn, states simply “ASSISTED LIVING/MEMORY CARE.” Likely a final home for those escaping or forced by their spouse or their children to vacate, their former world.
The two gents at her table, probably guessing they haven’t fascinated her, get up simultaneously, bid her extravagant adieux, and, one using his walker, vacate the Bistro, most likely to dress for dinner. Glass in hand, the woman comes over to Douglas’s chair by the wall, and, again bending down close to him, says, “Guess I wasn’t charming enough to hold their attention.”
“You know damn well you can charm any man here, unless he’s totally blind and deaf. You know,” he goes on, “she’s talked to the kids.”
“Mine aren’t kids anymore,” she said. “Now the shit’s hit the fan. Excusez-moi. Off to the little girl’s room. To freshen up.”
Her swearing and cute expressions still bug him, but her phraseologies aren’t her main attraction to him. He watches the English woman glide away, walking like a model, high cheek bones, seemingly unlined skin, breasts held high.
She knows his eyes follow her closely, knows how exciting he says she is.
He thinks. Not for the first time since he arrived three months ago – relocated there, like Margaret, by their caring or fed-up kids – that most of one’s physical needs are taken care of here. Not so good on the emotional and psychological front. But Evergreen Place was not a church, even though nominally a Methodist undertaking. They take down the tall wooden cross in the chapel, when it’s used for a Friday night Jewish service. He wonders if he can get up without staggering, to seek another glass of pinot noir at the bar.
Margaret and Douglas had first gotten acquainted playing Scrabble in the library on Thursday afternoons. Margaret proved to be an aggressive word warrior, concocting such exotic but actual words in the dictionary that the few other players soon lost interest. Margaret and Douglas quickly discovered they had other things in common, and shortly afterwards began to take turns – when all was quiet at night and caregivers dozed – sneaking into each other’s bedroom, fortuitously down the hall from each other, often remaining there until just before daybreak.
He and she, the slim woman with the now mostly white, hair, had walked, a few days back, along the corridors on the second and third floors, snickering at, the elegant, albeit generic, framed pictures on the walls – of revolutionary soldiers marching in formation or firing their muskets, extravagant flowers, Audubon birds, peaceful pastorals. Pictures intended, they imagined, to give Evergreen Place some character.
“No character at all.” That’s what Clarisse had said initially about their house. After they got married, and over the next three-plus decades, she gradually, usually, not always subtly, made changes – to instill some character and grace to what had been a rather formless brick colonial in their anonymous upstate suburb. Now that house was gone in his life. As was, three years earlier, that graceful, artistic woman who’d long ago captured his heart. As was, in different ways, he, himself.
“What are you pondering so intently, Douglas?” the tall woman asked him when she returned. She’d learned early in their brief relationship that he far preferred Douglas to Doug, that he really cared about using the right words to express himself and was often aghast when others did not follow suit.
His wife, Clarisse, used to say he was too good with words, that he focused too much on other people’s outward language, and not enough on what people really meant, in their hearts and souls. Although agnostic about souls, he’d tried over the decades, with admittedly limited success, to grasp better what lay behind other people’s words. But he was never nearly as good at it as Clarisse, who almost always listened with compassion and attentiveness to their friends, and often strangers, alike.
“It could be a lot worse for us here,” said Margaret, sitting down next to him. “When I used to visit my mother in the nursing home in Surrey, most of the women were lined up in their wheelchairs in the corridors. They sang songs to themselves. Or saw things nobody else could see. Or just stared ahead into the void.”
He’d begun to appreciate – besides her glamour – her candor, her directness, even her frequent profanity outbursts, which so disturbed both her gentle caregivers here and her children in the outside world. Very different, of course, from Clarisse. Quite unpredictable, compared to Clarisse. Perhaps that was part of the attraction. They’d said in that grief support group a few years back that you never can replace the departed loved one, but instead might develop new relationships, if you were fortunate enough, while still remembering and honoring the old.
They’d spoken the previous week to the director about moving in together – to save money of course – and to get rid of having to sneak around at night. The director, surprisingly, said it might not be a bad idea, made no mention about their getting married or anything like that, but mentioned she’d have to talk to Margaret’s two children, since they were paying her rent. She also suggested that, even though Douglas was “paying his own freight,” he might like to run the idea past his son. “To avoid misunderstandings.”
The new lovers were hardly surprised when the shit did indeed hit the fan.
“Disloyalty to my son’s saintly mother?” muses Douglas aloud. “Eventual inheritances?”
“Not so with me,” says Margaret. Hardly anything left to bequeath. Carolyn and Roger do pay my bills. But, if I move into your place, voilà, no more rent. That’s most of the expense.”
“Let’s process this a bit,” Douglas says the next day, using yet another of Clarisse’s favorite expressions.
“I’ll deal with my children,” says Margaret. “They met you just that once, but Carolyn said later she thought you a kind man. They’re probably feeling sorry for you, having to put up with me at close quarters. When my former husband divorced me years ago, he announced to all that he just couldn’t take my ups and downs any longer.”
“There’re other things too,” says Douglas.”
“More of a commitment than you want? I mean sharing close quarters twenty-four-seven, not just overnight every few days. Then too, there are our respective physical, shall we say, impairments as well. Why we’re here in the first place. They’d be a lot harder to hide in that circumstance.”
Douglas is silent.
“There are other things for me too,” she continues. “Things you don’t know. I’m getting more forgetful. My children took away my credit cards. Then my driver’s license. I just want to make a clean breast of it.”
Douglas watches her chest rise and fall as she speaks.
“On the bright side,” she goes on, “I think I’ve calmed down a lot since I left George. And I drink a lot less since I’ve been here.
“More processing needed,” is all he says to her.
The next Friday, they sit again at a table in the now mostly darkened and deserted Bistro, a neutral space. Dinner long over, the servers have gone their way for the night.
“You know,” he says, sometimes I got mad at Clarisse toward the end. Not just because I knew she was leaving me. Dying. But because I knew I’d never have the chance to meet the behavior standards she set. She was no plaster saint. But maybe she was too good for me.”
“I’m not nearly that good, Douglas. I’m a lot wilder than Clarisse. You’re the only one who gets me. Perhaps it could work for us. At least for a while.”
“Maybe a long while.”
“I’ve no wish to tangle you in something you don’t want. Just some wine in the evening, while we watch the telly. Some cuddling at night. Caressing. Someone next to me in the bed, who’s there when I wake up. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“We could go dancing in the afternoon, in our apartment. I got some CDs with waltz and Latin music. In the beginning, George and I used to do that in clubs. Long ago.”
“Perfectly delightful picture. Listen, I have to go away for a few days....”
“Good Christ, no. Hell. Don’t, please!”
“My son,” he continues, “wants me to come visit them, he and his wife, this weekend. To talk this over. So, I won’t move too fast. It will be a good thing, I guess, for you to think this through too, before we go further.”
“Okay. I get it. Really, I do. I’ve no qualms, dear man. Have a good visit. See you Monday. I’ll miss you.”
She’s not in the dining room for lunch Monday. No response when he knocked on Margaret’s door later that afternoon. On opening it, he finds the room deserted, her personal things gone.
The director tells him Margaret has had a very difficult time that weekend. Swearing violently at her caregiver and the nurse, calling both of them vile racist names, and then slapping the caregiver. “Twice. Actually, they were more like wallops. We called her children.”
“You didn’t call me,” Douglas snaps. “You knew where I was.”
“You’re not family, I’m afraid. She’s in the Memory Unit. It was either that, or her children would have to take her out of here immediately and put her somewhere else. We can’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our assisted living apartments. Liability issues. It’s not good for the staff or our residents. Or for Margaret.”
“Good God.”
“I must tell you also, she was cursing you a lot. And your son. Not sure why. Douglas, I’m sorry. Very sorry. For both of you. I thought your being together might help stabilize her. Sadly, I was wrong. I hope you understand.”
Collapsed in the chair opposite the director’s desk, he blurts out, “she must have had too much to drink. I could have helped prevent it.”
“Alcohol was not involved, to be the best of our knowledge. We’ve seen the signs coming for a while. Talked before to her children about Margaret’s increasing lack of impulse control. Perhaps, you chose not to see it.”
Wondering where love fits in all this, a word neither Douglas nor Margaret has ever said aloud to each other, he asks the director, “When can I see her?”
“We don’t feel that would be helpful for her right now. Perhaps later, if her children approve. She’s now on a closed unit. For those with Alzheimer’s, dementia. It’s locked for our residents’ safety. I truly hope you can see, Douglas, that your plan probably would have ended tragically for you both.”
“You think this isn’t tragic?”
The director is silent.
Douglas stares over her shoulder, through the office window, to the trees outside Evergreen Place, and into the void beyond.
Copyright © 2024 by Gerarld Kamens.
About the Author
Gerald Kamens has worked in a mental hospital, the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, but spent most of his government career in the US Agency for International Development, focused successively on Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and global environmental issues. He later worked for an international conflict resolution organization. In retirement, he acted and sang for six years in musicals. Nowadays, at age 89, he continues to provide support for people grieving the loss of a loved one, and also writes short adult and children’s fiction, and personal essays, some of which have appeared in national publications. Other than that, he and his wife, parents of four grown children, most days meditate and play Scrabble and pool. They live in Falls Church, Virginia.
Joni Hanebutt
Collinsville, IL USA, May 9, 2023: Indian Mounds at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, Illinois
© Joni Hanebutt.
Douglas Twells
Spending Time with My Grandson at Cahokia
My grandson is staying with us for a week. We visited Cahokia the other day. He and I climbed to the top of Monks Mound. Actually, I was the one who climbed, slowly, stopping every few steps to look up and watch. He ran two steps at a time when he wasn’t tight-rope-walking the wall along the side. Amazing the energy and excitement a ten-year-old brings to almost anything.
Driving by on trips to and from Chicago, I seldom notice when we pass the mounds. I last visited twenty years ago. My grandson is bringing this place to life again for me.
The original inhabitants abandoned this area by 1350. Cahokia’s civilization scattered like dandelion seeds blown across the prairie, well before Europeans reached the shores of North America.
Here’s the nice photo I took of my handsome young man and namesake after we reached the top of the mound. Look closely. To his right and behind him in the distance, you can see the Arch and the skyline of downtown St. Louis. The river runs there as a presence we sense but cannot see from here. A half mile off the mound, another river runs at speed, the river of traffic on Interstate 55. We try to picture life eight or nine-hundred years ago when forty thousand people lived here. This isn’t Luxor or Mohenjo-Daro. It feels almost recent by comparison. Yet consider the transformation of this continent—the entire world even—since 1350.
Odd to think, in the mere thirty years we have lived here, the Milam Landfill, just south on Interstate 55, has been topped off, finished, seeded, and rigged with vents for seeping gases. We’re carrying on the tradition: a new generation of Mississippi Valley Mound Builders. In size, Milam competes with and even, you might say, bests Monks Mound. Perhaps it will be designated a U. S. National Historic Landmark six hundred years from now. Will archaeologists be amused by their findings when they dig through our mounds?
I try to think sometimes about being an inhabitant of a geological place and time—how humans come traipsing across an area, cut down forests, drain swamps, lay out farms, pump the aquifer, buy and sell the land, develop subdivisions, put creeks and even rivers underground, then die off in a pandemic or changing climate, and the space—geological space—passes into a different time, its temporary inhabitants, turn and turnabout, replaced by others, or by none.
Townships, counties,
hamlets, cities, and
United States of Mind.
French fire sale.
Accidentally America.
Mississippian culture.
End of an inland sea.
Dispatched by chiefs, kings,
queens, presidents, ambassadors,
land managers, and mayors,
transient surveyors measure,
mark, stake, sometimes wall,
and militantly advance or protect
a portion of a continent.
Manifestly destined, entitled,
exceptional, forever . . .
Forever . . .
a long time and
we’ll never get there
thinking this way.
This land is America
by accident.
Temporary occupants
of temporary space,
we’re American
by accident.
20th and 21st Centuries, CE
Era of the Anthropocene
miniscule fraction between
the forever of never again
and the forever of about to be
An inland sea
drains its way
to the gulf called Mexico.
It makes a Mississippi.
Mounds replace mounds.
A civilization
vanished.
Seven hundred years
go by and
I can barely climb
Monks Mound.
My grandson runs
two steps at a time.
Copyright © by Douglas Twells.
About the Author
Douglas Twells served in the Peace Corps in India from 1968 to 1972, and later returned to India with his family on a research fellowship. Retired from a career in university administration, Twells lives with his wife in St. Louis. His poems have appeared in several journals including Of Rust and Glass, The Bookends Review, and Audience Askew.
Alexandru Daniel Pavalche
Mendicante sulla via con la sua tazz vuota delle monete
© Alexandru Daniel Pavalche.
William Waters
Lost in translation
Chartta—
Hebrew—
“To draw back your bow
But miss the mark;”
Empty handed hunting;
Hunger.
Turns into
Harmartia—
Greek—
“A fatal flaw
In the face of duty;”
The err in error;
Tragedy.
Now
Sin—
English—
“To offend god;”
Willfully wicked;
Evil
Copyright © 2024 by William Waters.
About the Author
William Waters is an associate professor, in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. Along with Sonja Foss, he is coauthor of Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation.
David Wilkinson
Ponte Londra di Waterloo di protesta di rebellione di estinzione chiusure e blocchi stradali della strada
© David Wilkinson.
Diana Woodcock
Islands of Extinction
As usual, there’s trouble
in paradise. On the islands
of evolution, researchers
plan a solution, holy ones
pray for a better way.
The Hawaiian Archipelago
has been given a new distinction.
As more and more people arrived –
Polynesians and other settlers –
the original species could no longer
survive, too much land cleared for
crop growing and human communities.
Too many introduced plants and
animals thrived and multiplied –
the understory of tree fern and ‘ohi’a
forests destroyed by pigs whose
muddy wallows bred mosquitoes
to transmit avian malaria and pox
to native birds. Cats,
mongooses and rats ate native
birds and their eggs. Invasive
faya (fire tree) and kahili ginger
took over the forests. The rich
tapestry unravelled – some habitats
damaged beyond recovery.
Praise be the ones working to restore
the others, building fences to keep
out pests, tracking and killing feral
pigs, destroying faya, guava and
kahili ginger so native plants might
return and have a chance to nourish
Hawaiian honeycreepers, Nene,
Kamehameha butterflies, and happy-
face spiders. May they flourish
once again. It all began
a mere few million years ago –
the wind bringing spores from a
southeast Asian fern, which settled
on lava fields in the middle of the ocean.
Then seeds and snails, spiders and
insects rode air and ocean currents,
or floated on debris to these islands.
Birds came, migrating or storm-
tossed, pooping out or scattering from
their feathers seeds. Monk seals and
hoary bats arrived while so many
others could not survive the long
voyage of chance – the ocean expanse
too great. And so the Hawaiian
Islands were colonized over 32
million years. Species evolved
new forms. Without predators
and competitors, nettles became
nettleless, mints mintless, stink-
bugs stinkless, birds flightless.
Ninety percent of its native flora
found nowhere else on Earth.
These once-barren islands with
their diversity of species bear
witness to life’s tenacity and
evolution’s force. Each mountain
and river, waterfall and volcano,
taro patch and rainbow is
complete, alive and fully
realized, each one a miracle –
holy and palpable,
rising
above the darkness.
Copyright © 2024 by Diana Woodcock.
About the Author
Diana Woodcock has authored seven chapbooks and six poetry collections, most recently Heaven Underfoot (winner of the 2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist) and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee, she received the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women (for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders). Currently teaching at VCUarts Qatar, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where she researched poetry’s role in the search for an environmental ethic. For nearly eight years, she lived in Tibet, Macau, and on the Thai-Cambodian border teaching and working with refugees.
Ritu Jethani
Speranza scultura di Robert Indian nel centro di Manhattan a New York City, USA
© Ritu Jethani.