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SOBER ANNIVERSARY

I'm sober 32 years a day at a time.
My mother died when she was 63.
She was two months shy of 64.
My father died when he was 65,
22 years before my mother died. Go
figure. It's the old math, the old man
bedding a dark-haired beauty in her twenties
in his fifties. The kind of math
where the numbers in the word problem
equal the problems of the people in the world
problem. I was 14 when he died,
which means he was 51 when I was born.
My mother was 29. This was back in the 1950s
when a pack of cigarettes cost 25 cents.
I was 17 the first time I smoked weed
in the woods out behind our high school.
I fell in love with the way it made me feel.
No one loved getting high more than I did..
I quit going to classes, quit playing sports, quit
high school and landed on my feet in a college
for creative fuckups on the Hudson
where I learned how to shotgun beers
and roll a joint while steering a car with one knee.
I was 32 when I finally put down the poison
on April 28, 1991. That was 32 years ago
and 15 years after I'd first picked it up.
When I got sober my son was 11 months old,
just shy of a year. My daughter wasn't
even born yet. If you do the math,
I've been clean and sober twice as long
as I drank and drugged. And my kids
have never seen me drunk or stoned, which is
not only a blessing, it's infinitely greater than
everything on the other side of the equation.

Paul Hostovsky

SISSY MOON

It’s the full moon of October, a day like others, except that she was born under this moon
forty-eight years ago. There was a number on the calendar, a day of the week, and there was
vernix covering her translucent skin. The moon was the same: Waxy and thin, a thing to behold.
We celebrate the October Moon and name it as we like: Hunter’s Moon, Blood Moon,
Falling Leaves Moon, Drying Rice Moon, Freezing Moon, Ice Moon, Migrating Moon.
Her Moon. And she, too, was given a name. And a time. And so it is told.

Patty Joslyn



JUNE 21

I can't call it a birthday
for a child never born
but the due date
said the doctor
who would later
notice a problem
fibroids, an abnormally
shaped womb
prepare, he said
but who can prepare
and then the day
in the second trimester
that I do not calendar
but cannot forget
in only my internal
June calendar that 21
which was that year
the first day of Summer
which would have been
her name and now
is when the sol (sun)
stands still (sistere)
every year for her.

Katie Milburn



THE DAY WE BECAME US

Is not the day we married
Not that day we stood before a judge,
As she pronounced us man and wife

The our-own-holiday we celebrate
Occurred one April Sunday morning
Sixteen years before

That day, our witness was a cardinal
(Though not the kind that choose a Pope)
Our church, a country lane

Our choir, Meadow Larks and Bob-O-Links
Backed up by red-winged blackbirds,
Crows in sleek black cassocks

The flowers were magnificent
Trillium, Blood root, Trout lily
Arranged by bumble bees and butterflies

The vows we spoke were not rehearsed
In fact, they were unplanned
And yet, no less indelible - no less sincere

Exactly what we said, I can’t remember
But I do remember clearly how it felt —
Like I’d just won the Lottery

Now, every year, we mark the day
With a visit to the countryside
A hike, a walk, a quiet stroll

Hand in hand, we celebrate
The life we’ve had, the love we've shared
The promise of another spring

Frank Kelly



HAIBUN WRITTEN ON THE NARROW ROAD TO SPRING

Early snow in January made me delay my start. I stayed in my little house and wrote and painted and made soups, salads and cookies. On that unusually warm day late in the month, I packed some cookies and my rucksack and took to the road. I passed creeks that flowed cold and noisy with melting snow and followed them to places where evergreens ignored the winter and moss on the rocks was verdant.
In a short month that leaped, I leaped over a frozen stream on rocks that were as flat as my zafu meditation cushion. A turtle under the ice cruised the bottom unafraid under this crude glass.
By March, each day was unexpected. Winter, spring, even one summer day that was accidentally inserted in a week. My legs were sore from all my traveling. I found a hut where I could make a small fire and sit on a straw bale to write these words which I will illustrate later.
Vernal pools in the woods filled and frogs, toads and salamanders found them. Charged with green energy, they mated and did not mind me watching at all. I was jealous of them, though I knew there was no love there, still I was envious. With no calendar, I knew that the Full Moon would mean the day and night were equal and I would find my new home.
Hillside of pink phlox
meets morning sun -
tears or perhaps dew

Lily Hana Hayashi



EACH DAY A HOLIDAY

Each day is special when I wake,
for I know that for a while I am
alive, at my age no mean feat.

Each day is special when I find
the paper on the driveway, thin
as it’s become, comics inside.

Each day is special when I find
a note from someone I know
among the ruckus of emails.

Each day is special when I find
I’ve not run out of milk or cereal
for the morning meal, or hot coffee.

Each day is special when the sun
spreads its morning rays through
the mottled trees, the quiet houses.

Each day is special when I bike
through empty paths on this winter
holiday, alone with the busy squirrels.

Much of life is simply in the daily
living, the quotidian exactitude of
the normal, the usual, the expected.

Special days come, then pass, then
are soon forgotten as the months,
the years, the decades, leach away.

So I make each day a holiday, live it
with awareness, with attention, with
the knowledge of its evanescence.

Rob Miller



WE THREE SISTERS’ DAY

More often and less formally referred to as Sister’s Day
A Friday in mid-late January
After the stores and our holiday savings
have been emptied
The madness of it all behind us
Though not the bills nor the pounds
And so we three sisters gather
to celebrate us
To reminisce our past
Our shared history
We toast the new year
With tea and coffee
No cleverly names cocktails
No ugly sweaters
Or at least not intentionally
No fancy gifts
Just an afternoon together
A rare occasion
We talk about grandparents
Aunts, uncles no longer with us
About dad and mom
And the baby sister we never knew
And our parents who returned home
To a house filled with baby gifts
But no baby
Mom now in the last years of her ninth decade
How much longer ‘til they reunite?
Some things we think but do not say
A strange comfort
One we all share
Our time is not for small talk
But rather important talk
Or no talk
Things that are hard to feel
And harder to speak
Our bond Is a master translator
Our love both conduit and adhesive
Of intertwined and overlapping childhoods
All those and all those yesterdays
that made us – us
We three sisters

Terri J. Guttilla


WHEN THE MOURNING DOVES RETURN

When the mourning doves return
they bring enthusiasm,
a biological glee,
as they chase and nip on wing,
coo sweetly in unison.

When the nest building begins
I rise to watch, like past years,
to witness the gathering,
the framing of a cradle,
the cushioning of the bowl.

Two eggs to blanket gently
will appear at some point soon,
as I wait and watch close by,
unlike the circling hawk,
its sightline obscured by leaves.

The hatchlings will strain agape
to receive the sacrament.
Their first flights sadly signal
the close of my annual
break from the quotidian.

Rob Friedman


I CELEBRATE

December 6, a gray day two years ago,
and overcast now. That day
you went from ER to hospital without me –
COVID raging us apart. No visitors.
So I went to visit the forest
where we hiked and trained our search dogs.
My first visit since that summer’s
wildfire. With you in hospital, I had time
and worry for walking.
December sky heavy with rain clouds
too late; wildfire out at last, contained.
But its presence – then and even now –
aftermath in a landscape of skeleton
trees standing dead. It fit my mood.
Raven a stark black silhouette atop a pine.
I found new winter grass
pushing through soil dozed for firefight.
And in the midst of burn,
a stringer of manzanita, deer-brush, oak,
ponderosa, incense cedar –
untouched. Signs that your forest
might not be dead,
omen that life was coming back.
Taylor Graham



ON THIS DAY

I celebrate this day alone; no one knows.
Quiet moments of solemn reflection,
A candle or two, some genuflection.
No one else knows I revere this day,
In anonymous, silent celebration.
This day, the fifteenth of May.

Twenty years ago, at a place in the past,
We shared a meal, well away from the crowd.
"It may be therapeutic!" I heard you say,
And that therapy, clearly, was here to stay.

A seismic shifting of tectonic plates,
New oceans grew from incipient streams!
This genesis of a fresh new life,
Shared with the woman of my dreams.

You freed a tortured soul.
You soothed a troubled mind.
You made me whole.

The fifteenth of May.
Independence Day.

John Botterrill

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