1998 Poetry Contest for Writers over 50

1998 Passager Poet: Christopher Buckley

Honorable Mentions:

Cover Photograph by Ron Levitan

Editors for Issue 29
Mary Azrael
Rebecca Childers
Kendra Kopelke

Assistant Editor
Kathleen Fantom Shemer

Graphic Designer
Mary Clark

excerpt from
Zeno Said

Sure, there are things you can still pray for.
The clouds offer no argument against one realm
moving invisibly  ; and without dissent   at the edge
of another,
                            persuaded by the least suggestion
of wind in the manzanita to move beyond it all.
You can pray to be a cloud, I guess—
you can be that alone.
                                    But I always hear
the voices of children in the trees,
and know there the incalculable velocity of loss,
where, above the town, I stood
in my cloud-white uniform shirt with stars
pasted on my collar, and sang songs in French
I'd learned by heart.
                                    Now, as the light falls short,
I turn west for the diminuendo of starlight
rising on the blue scales of the past,
where everything has always been
floating perilously like candles in paper sacks
sent from the creek mouth out to sea.
So much for souls.
                            Haven't I had enough?
Not by half. Not even when I think
I've tempered grief and immediately
new points of pity fill in—hip pointer,
hamstring, bone spur, ventricular arrhythmic beat—
and I find myself settling for one dog-easy day,
just loose in the old streets on a Sunday,
ambling somewhere in the sun.
And that turns out to be no place,
finally, to recover anything—a few blocks
from the creek bed, and plastic grocery bags scuttle
through the new housing sites, one snagged
like some child's lost gown, in the high, thin boughs.

Christopher Buckley
1998 Passager Poet

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Striking the Match

For years, I have been telling my shadow to stand up straight,
not to lean against me. She never says, but she resents me.
It is her turn.

And I keep winding the clock,
trying on new shoes; tap toes and hiking boots.
I refuse to take her seriously, leave her
to her sidewalk checker game with the sun,

I cannot trust her with my life
or anything so undefined. A mime in silk pajamas;
she offers me tickets to outlandish places.
The plane rides are always gliders.

She calls herself my name spelled backwards,
as I step out she tries to overtake me. My shadow
has taken up smoking only recently.

At awkward intervals, as I blow the candles out
across the cake, she strikes matches
but they never seem to take.

Some night, up against the wall with others of her kind,
she will stop me and ask me for a light
and I will give her all of it.

Lollie Butler

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Stone Dream

When I became stone
I thought I'd be lonely
for how could I know

that violets would cluster
and whisper in shade at my base.
That lichen would hug me

and field mice and earthworms
and beetles would tunnel beneath me
to winter down. Or that thunder

and lightning would gash me
before rain began with a soft
drumming sound. Or know primrose

would sprout on my southern side.
Or know that I'd go on breathing
and dreaming. That time is both

taker and giver and in the year
of the hundred year flood
I'd dance, once again in the river.

Ebby Malmgren

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Fitting a Wedding Dress on an Adopted Daughter

It's time, my lovely,
to wrap you up
for your next move.

Turn around. Such falls
of crepe rich as cream
tulle misting in your hair.

You came in a white nightgown
and will be sent off again
in white, having grown
long bones, teeth
for straightening,
a fierce will.

You compose your shoulders
to lift a great weight.
Your eyes seek a spot
on the wall for balance
on your stool, your pedestal.

Straight,
like a styrofoam bride
topping a cake, you enclose
grand fragilities.

Turn again, darling.
I am here with a mouth
full of pins, measuring
for the last time,
shipping you off,
my dear, my quick transient.

Florence Trefethen

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About the Photographer

Ron Levitan is a photographer/lawyer turned photographer/teacher. The cover photo for issue 29 was taken at Lake Myvatin, Iceland, a wildlife breeding ground located in one of the most volcanically active regions on earth. His trip there in the autumn of 1994 began his transition to a new career.

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continue to Issue 28