 Vision of the Last Days, by Hildegard von Bingen (Germany) before 1179 Hildegard’s Vision, 12th C. Most disturbing of this visionary’s mimesis are the animals with their tongues licking a sticky, slimy plant, sprung perhaps from a darkly ocean deep. The similar plant, fingerlike appears again in the lower right, tentacled and shedding a frightening and toothy guise. The lady figure blesses them all-- blesses the frightful face, blesses the four figures looking up curious but unafraid. Von Bingen has travelled her mystic path; her way is bumpy, her house non-plussed. She has arrived at the acme sharing her viriditas and cosmic vision while singing and blessing us. Carole Mertz Carole Mertz, interviewer, poet, and essayist, has recent work at Abandoned Mine, Adanna 2022 print journal, Dreamer’s Creative Writing, and River Teeth. Her meta poem “Invited to Linger” was a finalist in the Ars Poetica 2022 Contest at Riddled with Arrows. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Carole is preparing an essay on poet Robert Miltner’s use of the caesura. Carole is Editorial Assistant with Kalisto Gaia Press. ** Visions of Light Abbess in solitude, Mother Superior, your poems transform mere words—prophetic lyrics wrapped around musical notes—quaint compositions denoting devotion, pervading the few yet desired by multitudes seeking holy sights & hallowed cathedrals to exalt liturgy-- echoing resplendent plainchant, curbing cardinal temptation. Magistra Hildegard, High Middle Age philosopher dancing among shadows in a stone floor abbey, I study you full of awe & admiration; Benedictine simplicity embraces natural history rooted in science, theology compatible alternative medicine, holistic wellness relished by recipients of your herbal remedies & mystic prayers. Sibyl of the Rhine, I listen to your sacred monophony channel cosmic laws, know you supervised Scivias artisans crafting miniature illuminations stamping mandela paintings with gestalt immediacy, feverishly kept experience— watching & being seen by a deity; now, bless my imagination, let prescient mysteries inform lingering questions, baptize any doubt. Saintly scribe, share visions of five peaks, ebon ropes, tethered beasts facing west: sans grace, a fiery dog burns, yellow lion urges war, pale & horse snubs good works; meantime, black pig misery & muddy impurity touch grey wolf shoulders—dividing, conquering, plundering—son of perdition’s wicked jowls snapping above heads, rending & seducing while you chastise deception Von Bingen, I hear you; I know you; I admire your awareness-- spiritually grounded "reflection of the living Light”—your open hands beckon, etch The Last Days & the Fall of the Antichrist in my mind like a gilded rendering, divine revelations preserved for millennia as you champion redemption & guide salvation each epoch’s deliverance bathed in righteous blood & compassion. Sterling Warner An award-winning Washington-based author, poet, and educator, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Down in the Dirt, Shot Glass Journal, Danse Macabre, Ekphrastic Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, and Flytraps: Poems (2022)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Currently, Warner writes, participates in “virtual” poetry readings, and enjoys retirement in Washington. ** Reversals The clouds spend their words on prophecy. The knob-nosed ogre with fine-tuned foam Across its forehead converses with the Lovely With hair ribboned by the wind-- Silhouette of air and mist. An angel hovers overhead in a slurry of sparrows Gray in the rose setting of the sun Passing the moon on its rising. Vision of the end of days. A revision: black to white White to black in a negative snapshot With a snap of fingers strumming the twines of vines. Disembodied hands, gnawed by creatures With dentilated smiles, reach for the skies In the midst of transforming woman Into man in the lap of loins. In ascent to the castle, fortunes amassed Descend in the ridding of greeded goods. And the beasts surpass man to become the pinnacles Of being, assuming their rightful place on the land, Devouring a feast of grazing. The world will not end, simply reverse its spin. The end of days is the final vision-- With the loss of pattern And the absence of art in our imagination. Cynthia Dorfman Cynthia Dorfman has practiced ekphrastic writing as a frequent participant in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery writing program. She has been a writer, editor, publications director and communications manager in the public and private sectors. Her creative work has appeared on line and in print with the most recent, a short story in The Library Love Letter. In the summers she lives in an old shoe factory in Wisconsin, USA. ** That Light Though Faint At first in child, then forty years, bedimmed a Light illumined fears that death would be to soul unchaste forever discontent of waste thus laid to promise given those of peace eternal in repose awaiting promised honor paid for purity of course they stayed and vision they by skill enshrined in word, and song, and art refined as testaments so well distilled that argued conduct being willed by glimmer of that Light though faint begetting glow of cherished saint. Portly Bard Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Which Beast, Then Which beast, then, Will find me last-- My mouth open, holding for an August raspberry, stuffed instead by November’s creeping wolf-- blackmatted fur, thrusting hot, smelling of bitumen and rotting onions Or thornedcane spirals, split lizard tongues wrapped around my fingers that minutes ago lifted new eggs from nesting boxes Or shaggyslack jaw, redeye, leering teeth groinhung, panting soul clamped tight to my blank-eyed angel who still holds to heaven, not knowing how, or when. Denise Wilbur Denise Wilbur is a lifelong educator who has recently left the world of schools, claiming that time and open space to write. ** Hildegard’s World: The Secret of the Rose Window Precious Hildegard, when you entered this world, A magic millennium was also being born. Greece’s glory had faded. Centuries of thinkers disappeared after explaining Beauty, truth, logic, rhetoric, and the different kinds of love. The Romans were gone too, leaving their solid bridges, aqueducts And the old church in Bamberg behind, Along with their stodgy marble gods, resembling no one but themselves. Your world, Hildegard, was filled with upward-flowing light, With angels everywhere, soaring on deep lapis blue wings, their haloes aglow, Through the realm of dreams, visions, miracles, symbols and saints. Demons, dragons, beasts, serpents, and wolves inhabited this same Stratosphere, along with the secret sounds germinating in the Black Forest Where the elves and the fairies lived. And all were real, as real as bridges, As authentic as thoughts. But the greatest beings in your world Were Mary, emerged from the shadows, now wrapped in her blue mantle, Ruling the sky and the sea and sitting beside Her shining, golden Son. Hildegard, you belonged in this new reality, You and your music, your Responsories, played on the psaltery at mass, Your fragrant garden, filled with blue rosemary and healing, greening herbs. You lived in this swirling circle of color, where the chant of Women’s voices lifted like bells, linked together in a dancing daisy chain Of yellow light, pink and crimson light, claiming dawn and dusk, The green light of fragrant mountain pines and summer chestnut leaves. Your world was Mary’s world, the place where stones were transformed Into towers, into spires that aspired to reach the circle Where the cloud of witnesses surrounded the very throne of God. Under the towers, the turrets and the spires of these new temples of sacred stone, The rose windows, built in your lifetime, carried light from the farthest star Into the darkest crypt, casting the demons into obscurity. The vision you left to help us see the Last Days as you perceived them Is as symmetrical as the thoughts that created the Greek temples and the Roman roads. Surrounded by swirls of golden light with eighteen roses linked in a tall rectangle, You saw two rooms above, one room below, tightly confined, chaos and order at war. One upper room is filled with beasts. In the adjoining room, She sits in the high tower, bathed in golden light, her arms lifted in prayer. In the room below, He, crowned with gold, also reaches up, sharing his space With demons and fire. His feet lift from the floor; his face is unafraid. Both of these Holy Ones know the Rose Windows’ secret: No matter how much space The demons occupy, no darkness can overcome a Rose Window’s light. Rose Anna Higashi Rose Anna Higashi taught Japanese Literature, English Literature, Poetry and Creative Writing at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California, for thirty-five years. Upon retirement, she was commissioned by the Catholic Bishop of San Jose to serve as a Lay Ecclesial Minister. She held this position for nine years as Director of Adult Religious Education at St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Los Gatos. She now lives in the ancient Hawaiian village of Kaaawa in rural Oahu with her husband, Wayne Higashi. They hope to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary in 2023. Rose Anna’s poetry journal, Blue Wings, was published by Paulist Press, and many of her lyric poems and haiku can be viewed on her website, myteaplanner.com, co-written with her niece, Kathleen Pedulla. This website also contains Rose Anna’s monthly blog, “Tea and Travels.” Her poems and essays have also appeared in a variety of other publications, including The Avocet, The California Quarterly, Caesura, Poets Online, Agape Review, The Catholic Poetry Room on the Integrated Catholic Life website, and the college English textbooks, Visions Across the Americas and Thresholds. ** What to Bring to the Last Days Bring operatic visions of chain-tongued lions, lizards, and wolverines who shore up the dying tree. Bring music from the firmament whose toothy stars exude a green river before the vagabond choir. Bring the reclamation of toppled bridges and the gestures of scholastic saviors as yet unborn. Bring blood pooling in your extremities as you straddle evil with no bone left unturned. Lisa Vihos The poems of Lisa Vihos have appeared in many poetry journals, both print and online. She has published four chapbooks, and has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and numerous awards from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. She is a founding editor of Stoneboat Literary Journal and the Sheboygan organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change. In 2020, she was named the first poet laureate of Sheboyganwhere she hosts the podcast Poetry on Air for Mead Public Library. Her first novel, The Lone Snake: The Story of Sofonisba Anguissola, was released in May, 2022 from Water’s Edge Press. ** Reflections of the Living Light "For people rise and set like the sun..." Hildegard von Bingen, Vision Xl "I've got the world on a string, sittin' on a rainbow, Got the string around my finger ..." as performed by Frank Sinatra (songwriters Harold Arlen / Ted Koehler) Nature guided her. The soul in the body was like sap rising in a tree. During an Animal Guide meditation she had seen a bristling boar, looking just as he had on the banner fluttering in the wind over King Arthur's ship, the Prydwen, as it sailed into the underworld to capture the Hallows of Britain. It must have been the winter solstice sun rising over the water on the east coast of Ireland at Newgrange because snow had fallen like chalk dust on the back of the boar before she realized he was only a javelina she'd seen on a family trip to south Texas. But the dreamlike meditation continued, and she wondered if the pig was in danger when a golden lion sprang from a medieval picture, Vision of The Last Days created by Hildegard von Bingen, her stylized lion squeezed into a window-box in the drawing with the pig, a pale stallion, a fiery dog and a white wolf all 5 animals attached by strings to 5 mountain tops that resemble branches of quaint medieval vegetation. At the base of a monster-like botanical Antichrist (SE of the 5 animals who lived in the North) the 4 Evangelists wonder what else will change in the last days of their world. John had been an Eagle, Luke, a Cow; Mark had been the Lion; and Matthew, originally a serpent like some ancient Beelzebub had been transformed to an Angel with the advent of Christianity. Like a breeze in their ears, they could hear God's voice in the trees; His promise in the healer's hands -- the hands of Hildegard von Bingen -- a woman who worked with tinctures, herbs and precious stones; who knew blood-letting -- the fluid red as liquid fire -- had the power of the bloodstone and should only be done when the moon was full, when the voice of living light guided her hands as it had done since she was 8 -- 2. The light which I see...is not spatial; but it is far , far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it ' the reflection of the living Light.' And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues and certain human actions take form for me and gleam. Hildegard von Bingen The animals are guiding me backward. Together, we cross time in my mother's story -- and I am falling from the mountaintop of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. A book with a red and gold spine falls open to the Crusades -- a page where King Richard the Lionheart is returning to save England; and alone, my mother prays to God to save me, unconscious. There are no bargains, but she strikes a bargain holding me up like an offering, bartering to give me a Father. And what marketplace is this, where a boy pulls a sword, Caliburn, from a stone and becomes the True King because he is pure of heart? & why did God, like a judge, hear my mother, and wake me, gentle as a dove's wing feathers folded in the shape of a living harp, the music in its strings leaving marks, a staff (thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me) in an illumination -- A Vision of The Last Days where a crowned figure rises -- body suspended, as on a cross, while Hildegard von Bingen watches from a broken tower, its stones shaped like the teeth of an open zipper in a space she has imagined, a purgatory where sins are absolved and I will live to be 7 -- a year younger than the visionary artist when I began to see God's golden rings -- circles pointing out what a Father wants to show his daughter. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. Her psychic energy is low in these troubled days in the 21st century, a shadowed time in history; but the golden rings of light are true to her life story. The first she remembers appeared around a rock, broken open to a clear crystal centre on the school playground in Austin, Texas, circa 1952. The painting can be read differently, of course. It could represent the first and second coming, the spirit of Christ the King rising as Jesus of Nazareth watches from a broken tower, two fingers raised in blessing at the top of the painting, from that place where the sun rises in the east. ** Without Your Faith I have no way to understand my visions, that come and come like an avalanche, unstoppable, bright as the sun on new snow, heavy as stone, sharp enough to cut, like knives of ice. You saw hope, old promises, something you could trust, forgiveness enough for rescue from the beasts of the apocalypse. But I can not bend, curtsey or genuflect, see only the sly monster beneath those holy robes, choke on the scent and smoke of burning bodies, the ash silting up the streets of paradise. You heard the stars singing, their arms uplifted, their faces lit, like the moon, with a reflected glory. I hear only silence, beneath the faint electric hum of dust, sand blowing in the desert wind. Without your faith I am cold, comfortless, stubborn and dense as stone, alone even in this great congregation, pilgrims on the road to some New Jerusalem, a golden city only they can see. And yet I cannot look away, unsee these strange figures, a splendor spread across the sky. I have no names for them, no explanation, but there they are, alive, a pantheon of miracles, a gift or punishment, a shining regiment of gods and angels, waiting for me, ready for the promised armageddon. Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy has always been in love with words. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Third Wednesday, Earth's Daughters and Gyroscope. She has been a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. ** Sights and Sounds of St. Hildegard’s Vision of the Last Days St. Hildegard enlightens millennia with a medieval arcana of visionary images, foretelling the apocalypse. To embrace her we relearn a symbolic language. The three panels of the miniature painting “Last Days” weave together her revelation of struggle between darkness of sharp toothed evil and salvation. Her powerful, wordless narrative flows from scene to scene. A lexicon of medieval symbols offers a surfeit of wretchedness, corruption of humanity and nature, wonders of redemption, faith, truth, and durance of the Divine City. We decipher and recipher the epic story; revise her eloquent twelfth century imagery to the verbal semaphore of our language. In a postmodern mode, her story evolves with past present future blended. In abbreviated history, five wild beasts enwrap the past with ghastly long tongues. A fiendish antichrist emerges from the womb of the golden mother, grows large and menacing on a mountain top. Virtue confronts the excremental demon with a fulgent burst of heavenly lightning. The monstrous, spidery creature is destroyed. We are terrified, huddled together the midst of Armageddon. St. Hildegard’s “End of Days” is an elaborate graphic design, a vivid compressed chronicle of portent and dangers of secular life and hope for future salvation. But there is so much more: look and listen… She accepts no sonic or graphic boundaries in her expression of the cosmic, eternal divine. The visual and aural imagery are creations unrestricted by form or formula. While viewing St. Hildegard’s exotic miniatures, her spiritually profound, unique music pulses in our hearts and expands imagination. St. Hildegard’s eloquent, monophonic music resonates. Plangent threnody and elegant, graceful chant enhance and illuminate her mystical icons. In the “Last Days” vision an agile melisma throbs in ecstasy. Her beautiful chants are filled with love and sing of harmonious, ageless perfection. St. Hildegard’s many manuscript visions and musical offerings open insights into her era and our own time. They dispel moral confusion, enlighten turgid politics, subdue the lethargy of timorous thoughts and reduce the carnage of daily violence. In our millennium, her music and visual reflections offer amity and inner peace. Ben Sackmary Ben Sackmary is a lifelong writer of mostly poetry. Now retired after decades of college teaching (not literature), he has the time to devote to poetry that the art form deserves. He has no career interest in poetry and writes mainly for himself and friends. ** The Stubborn Pursuit of Pleasure with My Unvaccinated Lover My nightmare—fiery dog, pale horse, and a grey wolf licking their last licks on a sprawling trunk at dusk. Terror begins when they see my naked, thin figure, a body Giacometti might have bronze-casted for a promised-green turf. Life’s lost tongue. The vagabond face between the robed spirit’s legs masks a warning. I want a breath to find my clothes. Rope tugs from the mouth, oh that animal-stupid want! John Milkereit John Milkereit resides in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press. ** Doctor of the Church It was during the High Middle Ages. Women were the keepers of the house, the carers of families, the obedient wives of husbands. Hildegard von Bingen knew that, if she wanted to use her intellect and her talents as a woman, there was only one place: a convent. And she thrived. Polymath, composer, mystic, visionary, writer… Mother Superior, founder of natural history, purveyor of ecstasy. Hildegard von Bingen, the most accomplished of scientific women, lived for the reflection of the ‘living light’, the God who had clearly endowed her with a superior brain, music and rapture. She was never officially canonized, even though Saint Hildegard has been part of Church lore for centuries. The holiness of her life was never in doubt. When they made her ‘Doctor of the Church’, her intellectual achievements were finally recognized. Would that female scientists, composers, teachers today were thus enabled and elevated. Songs of ecstasy Correspondence with kings Fulfillment Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as six poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? has been published by Kelsay Books in July 2022. Also on Amazon the very latest: Whistling in the Dark, published by Taj Mahal Publishing House in August 2022. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Vision of the Last Days We tied the beasts by their tongues in the upper chamber, hoping to keep them quiet. The dogs couldn’t bolt when the demon arrived, but they did gag out tiny barking noises. The unicorn, outraged, stamped on the head of the nearest dog. He reared back, pulling on his tongue, trying to tear himself free and get at the other dogs. Bright red blood gushed from his mouth. Hildegard was oblivious to all the commotion. She had considered her work finished earlier and retired after lunch to the attic. There she dawdled with her doll castle and listened to her transistor radio. That, of course, left only me to deal with the devil’s disciple, who snarled at me, his face black with rage, his clawed hands clinching rhythmically at the air. As my subjects cowered near the edge of the great hall, my mind emptied, blank with fear. I had absolutely no idea what to do. But somehow, I began to sway in time with the angry motion of the demon’s hands. This must have startled him, for he abruptly stopped and looked at me intently. I stood very still. We stared at each other for an awful, awkward moment. It really did seem like an eternity. Then I did a little barefoot shuffle, some automatic, unconscious dance step dredged from childhood classes. I lifted my arms and spread my voluminous golden sleeves in a gentle, languorous arc. I smiled. “Do you like my codpiece?” I asked. Barry Basden Barry Basden lives in the Texas hill country with his wife and Bean, their little rescue terrier. ** The Mystery of Umbra Viventis Lucis Are we doomed to troll through Wikipedia or other google sites for enlightenment? Would that we could summon Hildegard herself to explain the grotesque figures drawn with hints of a childish hand: monsters and cowering little people and the levitating king-figure with a face in his crotch. And what of the strange animals with their long, notched tongues licking what could be slender fingers or just as easily the tentacles of an octopus, and the man/woman who appears to be teetering on razor blades? (no wonder he/she’s got their fingers crossed). Between you and me, I suspect a learned type or two will want to extol the picture’s depth of meaning without actually having a clue, something they certainly won’t be admitting to any time soon. But Pope Eugenius was impressed and said You go girl!..get that shit out there- or I imagine papal words to that effect - (Hildy: talk about raising your profile in one fell swoop!) Personally, I’d like to speak with Hildegard. And ask about the relationship to god/the universe or whatever spiritual magic she was birthed with maybe as a caul around her. Too bad she died so long ago, farewelled, by all reports, by two streams of light appearing across the skies to cross the room where she lay dying. I believe. Though thousands wouldn’t. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda is a Poet living in Lake Tabourie, NSW Australia. She’s been writing poetry since April 2021, with formal qualifications in Business Management and Personal Training. She is just beginning her Arts Degree in Creative Writing. She has recently been published in three anthologies, on Viewless Wings.com, in The Ekphrastic Review, with a poem forthcoming in the next edition of the Star 82 Review. Linda adores animals, family, and good champagne not necessarily in that order. ** Visions The abbess dipped her brush in the crimson and carefully dabbed in an eye. The monster winked at her. She filled in the other eye. Black pupils bored into hers, and she turned away for a moment to clear the vision. She had been gifted with visions since she was a small child and they called her Hildegard. The name had faded, but she had the visions still. Her fingers itched to continue. Paint us. Give us life. There was more crimson needed for the demon’s tongue. The abbess added three tiny brush strokes. She had been worried that the visions were sinful, but the archbishop had encouraged her to set them down in her books. Not sinful then. But disturbing. Distressing sometimes. She changed brushes. Ochre. The prince’s breeches. The monster’s head was between the prince’s legs. Why did he have a demon in the place of his manly parts? She sighed. An allegory possibly. Men’s urges. Though the times were reasonably calm, even if the English were still fighting one another. They had no king, hadn’t had one for as long as she could remember. And the Pope was calling for another crusade. The abbess looked at the red-eyed monster, black, hair like serpents. Evil, but not a Saracen, she decided. They worshiped one god, not like the Heathens. They were simply fighters. It was their land after all. The men fought and the women prayed. It was the same the world over. She thought for a moment about the Saracen women, praying, cloistered and veiled just as she was. But in their houses, fountains played in colonnaded courtyards, and birds sang in cool shaded gardens. Their husbands and fathers watched the stars and made maps of the heavens. Did their women watch too and wonder with them? She would have done, if she had been able. She hoped her Saracen-sisters did. She had never known her own sisters. Hildegard had been given into God’s service when she was too young to remember, and her occupations had always been those of God’s handmaiden. She had been observed night and day. Protected from evil. Green this time. The Serpent with a woman’s face. The Serpent always had a woman’s face. It was God’s will. She paused, the brush poised above the tiny puddle of verdigris, thinking of a clear desert night, a deep black sky alive with stars, a jackal howling. In a deft movement, the hovering brush dipped instead into the oak gall ink, and the abbess gave the Serpent a neat black beard. Jane Dougherty Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, The Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020. ** Monster Hide-N-Seek There are no monsters hunting me, Not one for me to hear or see, Though it’s said that they are there, No monster limbs are in my hair. I thought I heard a thump one night, I pulled my covers snug and tight, I closed my eyes and sang a song, That sound alone should make them gone. Maybe the monsters could be nice? A friend once voiced her sage advice, I rolled my eyes, patted her hand, It’s sweet how she can’t understand. The monsters do not smile or speak, They do not hide for me to seek, Their life is only as I breathe, The monsters are inside of me. Corrie Pappas Corrie Pappas is a small business owner living outside of Boston. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and she is the author of the children’s book, Come Along and Dream. ** The Colours of Night I hear the children play Stacking stones All the seven ahead of ball Breaking again- I breathe the dead Rising up a precipice Walking past my body Anchored in now. From the rear car window I watch myself Sitting on a broken fence- Hands drooping, one leg folded The other unable to reach the ground. Dark and hollow Spread across the whole, half eaten Like a wall with a peeling paint- I will find the lost in numbers Under the lighted lanterns, As a child where I had envisioned Tall bears hairy and brown Paws up in the air. The inner ghost splits Lightning cuts up the sky Thunder thrusts the eyes shut That never meet another sunrise. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing the most. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru.  Join us on Sunday afternoon for an ekphrastic writing session. Our small group creative writing playgrounds are about connection, community, and conversation, and you'll discover intriguing artworks and leave with ideas and drafts for poetry and small fictions. Workshops are via Zoom, and cost $30 CAD or approx. $24 USD. Click here or on image of angel for more information.
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