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I saw that Arthur Sze had been appointed our newest U.S. Poet Laureate. (See "Arthur Sze at the Library of Congress.") That news sent me looking at some of his poetry. The poem I landed on for this call for submissions is "At the Equinox."
The equinox, a moment of equal light and darkness, symbolizes equilibrium and change. Sze uses this celestial event to explore emotional and spiritual transitions. The poem’s structure mirrors this balance—shifting between vivid natural imagery and introspective reflection.
We have published issues here about the solstice and seasons, but this month we aren't really concerned about spring or autumn,as much as about the balance tipping to a change in a life. The change of seasons might be what tips the equilibrium for us. Certainly, the solstices and equinoxes were important since ancient times, especially in agrarian societies. Autumn coincides with harvests and the start of school. Spring is full of renewal, and summer is often a time of vacations and more time outdoors.
Sze's poem suggests how the external world can reflect our internal rhythms. The line “looping out into the world, we thread and return” suggests a cyclical journey that internally could be love, memory, or self-discovery. The poem also moves geographically (from Homer to Roanoke), implying that emotional resonance transcends physical space. The speaker admits, “I have no theory of radiance,” because some of what is happening can't be explained and suggests we might be better to experience rather than explain.
Turning the gaze upwards to the Moon’s “gleam” and “tides of starlight” evokes a kind of wonder at the vastness and mystery of the universe which might also touch personal experience.
I think that what the poem attempts in using nature as mirror and describing “orange and purple sea stars,” “rain evaporates off pine needles,” and “forsythia buds and blooms” are not just scenic observations, but reflections on inner states of awareness and emotion.
For this submission, can you, in your real or imagined life, think of moments of transition when the balance tipped, and can you connect them to changes in nature? It might not be an equinox or solstice. Perhaps, it is the changing of the tide, the rising or setting of the Sun, the first or last frost, a coming or leaving storm, fog lifting, Moon phases, meteor showers, or the first flower or fruit in your garden.
Arthur Sze (b. 1950, New York City) is an American poet, and translator whose work interweaves nature, science, and Eastern-Western traditions. The son of Chinese immigrants, Sze studied briefly at MIT before transferring to UC Berkeley, where he completed a BA in a self-designed poetry major.
Over a career spanning five decades, he has published twelve poetry collections and numerous translations, essays, and interviews. His most recent works include the poetry collection Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025) and the prose-and-verse volume The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2025).
Now, as the 25th U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Library of Congress for the 2025-2026 term, he plans to emphasize poetry in translation as a way to deepen public engagement with poetry and enrich the national poetic imagination.
ON THIS SHORTEST DAY
A broken compass on a dark road without signposts
on the longest night of the year,
driving home from the doctor's office
with talk of lower levels of serotonin,
disruptions to the production of melatonin,
erratic circadian rhythms repeating
like a car radio program I can't shut off,
to explain fatigue and lousy sleep patterns.
I checked off words on a form:
unmoored disoriented isolated disconnected.
Roadside moonlight on snow
is a literal painted winter blue.
I keep thinking that soon I can hibernate,
withdraw. No, doctor, I see that as a good thing.
Time for introspection and reflection.
Tomorrow, the day will be longer,
the night shorter. That's a good thing, right?
Just get me past the holiday season
of busy, social, cheerful and get me back
in step with my own stride, my own pace.
But that will not happen tonight.
Pamela Milne
THE LAST HOUR
Somber storm clouds
huddle like football players
in the afternoon sky
as fall flexes its muscles.
Through the window
of your hospice room,
I watch flags flap
with growing frenzy,
watch branches crack
and soar through the air
like untethered kites,
watch trash cans topple
and spill their guts
on sidewalks and streets.
And as the gusts
pick up speed,
your breathing
slows,
s l o w s,
s l o w s
till I transform
from wife to widow.
Susan Spaeth Cherry
SUPERSATURATED SOLUTION
Water rushes through river rocks speckled with
silver and cobalt, fixed against the banks
like resting kits against a relentless wind.
Clouds above counter other forces, their fluid
forms also adaptations to space and time.
The stones on the riverbank remain stones
lodged in silt and sand, unlike us,
more interested in the just noticeable difference,
in experiencing what's nearly imperceptible as if
the perception of change is change itself.
Would we tweens, on learning of Lot's
wife, how looking back at Sodom was
enough for an angry God to drop
a pipette of vengeance into her soul,
sealing her salty fate, learn the lesson?
The chemists know how to solidify water,
the precise proportions of solute to liquid
that with one more drop will turn
sloshing beakers of liquid into crystalline form
and stun a roomful of seventh graders.
Would we ever feel a similar profundity,
when looking back at the river, know
but not see how the rapids shape
the shore, or succumb to the beauty
of glinting stones resisting the water's press?
Rob Friedman
YIN-YANG
You say my new dog – young, rash, pale
golden as first light – joining my older dog –
black as midnight in primeval forest,
a dog tamed from the wild – completes a circle,
a balance act. Yin and yang. Just watch them
at play, weaving loops around each other,
raindrops in a pond stretching their limits
meniscus between water and sky, a flowing
one to another. Do they never stop to rest?
You say they keep my own self in balance,
moving – to paraphrase Einstein. It was
a leap to bring her home – on Labor Day,
the end of summer, beginning of death
to rebirth. All of us in this household
learning to balance on light-dark waves
of constant motion.
Taylor Graham
SCHOOL BUS, NORTH YORKSHIRE, 1968
Dewy grass in the hazy, rising sun,
And brittle trees in the winnowing wind,
In a time before battles -lost and won-
It was the era of Wilf Cram's charabanc!
On the way to school, we laughed and sang,
Unsupervised, on that creaking, clapped out bus,
A blue and white peril, a bucket of rust,
In which our parents placed their trust!
It buzzed and rattled up Settrington Hill,
Towards our prosaic destination,
Wilf, with his toothless determination,
In the gathering gloom of Autumn's chill,
Behind Wilf was his choir, singing still!
The littering, skittering leaves flew by
Along with trees and shaggy sheep,
Along with Time and Thoughts, like acorns
Gathered together in a heap.
School was a penance, it had to be done!
Not as the source of nascent poetry,
Nor as the treasure we would never see!
We returned home, gladly, in the setting sun,
Through the countryside, of doubtful memory,
John Botterill
KATHY
My aunt wore colors like butterflies wear their wings.
Glass earrings, matching pins
painted cardigans layered over complimentary hues
her vitality on display, yet still merely hinting
at the passion and courage beneath.
She knew how to roar.
When she lay dying
she never seemed diminished
and she never seemed afraid.
When she died the moon was waning.
Evening had come, the summer sun setting
the solstice just passed.
The moon, the day, the season,
they all were dying with her.
Layers of endings, yet what I remember best
is the pink that painted the snow on the Mission mountains.
Stark against the twilight, that vivid hue -
she was carried away on the alpenglow
a painting as vibrant as she.
C.L. Halvorson
LATE OCTOBER
Though it’s late October
the trees are still green
and AC’s still whine
in the heavy air.
Rumors of a cold front
are shown heading
our way, sagging like
a water balloon.
Strange songs fill the air
as birds of passage
fleeing before the cold
rest in dense foliage.
We tremble on the jagged
edge of winter, waiting
for the sudden drop
to almost freezing.
But you are still in my life,
at least for now,
perhaps until the spring
when youth takes wing.
And so I live for another day
taking what you give,
knowing that, like all things,
it cannot last.
Rob Miller
VERNAL EQUINOX
I am ached
with the suchness
of buzzing bud spring
and every living thing
(crocus circus)
champagne toasting
the alveoli
in the lung…
bewitchingly evolved
to circumscribe
life's precious
transmutations…
mind is no matter
death no conundrum
and oh
the oftsung palpitations -
candlewarm - feathersoft -
when even what is old
seems young
Timea Deinhardt
TOUGH LOVE
Today I see myself in you,
little pansy, winter’s flowering
face, deep in thought, perhaps
about uncertain tomorrows or
vanished yesterdays. I, too, have
bloomed my best, fought against frost,
and thrived in winter’s throes, and
like you, I am wilting, feeling spent,
not tolerating the increasing heat and
drought. Perhaps we need to be pinched
back, pruned, deadheaded, that again
we bloom boisterous and bold.
Jo Taylor
OUTSIDE THE BEACH HOTEL
The horizon is a smudged line between the incessantly chattering rains
and the tides’ indecipherable mantra. Morning, noon, night.
Sandwiched between the rough sea and the turbid sky,
rough winds cut like the edge of a diamond. Fever clothes our limbs.
The foam ascends to clutch the fading light. A patch of seashore buries
itself deep in our throats. Morning, noon, night. For three nights.
Until, the sun decides to scorch the clouds,
Clear the air, evaporate the cold, wilt the illness, redraw the edge of vision
to a single-minded straight line. As if by invitation, we venture out
on the flaxen sands, measuring the craters of our footprints
lodged in the boundaries of time. Milky bands of sea waves
roll in the Arabian breeze. We touch the soft surf, the turn in the tide.
‘Carry on, carry on,’ is a rhythm whispered by the purple sky.
A moss ridden log stands witness to an October of stories.
As twilight descends, we weave through the sand castles
and star fishes, collecting whelk and clam shells for memories.
The constellations come out, take their positions on the night’s map -
flickering fires crackling in the darkness.
Preeth Ganapathy
HARVESTING THE REMAINS OF MY LIFE
Stomach sinking-
the daily dread of returning home.
Cars I don't recognize,
people I don't know;
children in adult bodies
recreating in my house
invited by my adult child.
Roles reverse
when I walk through the door.
Curse words fly
but my ears have stopped hearing them.
Raging tears swell
in eyes half closed blurring the chaos.
Fearing their surface tension will burst
tipping the release of my silent screams,
I run to my room
and close the door for my outburst.
Lesson learned from broken men-
Words leave no bruises.
they break no bones.
Only the spirit.
Long ago my spirit
left my body as it lay crumpled on stairs,
weak and drowning.
Small eyes watched.
When the thundering voice slammed the door
we joined hands and turned the lock
on him forever.
So now, as I lay soaked a limp mess
on my floor, I summon my spirit
to bring me the courage to fill
the space abandoned by patience,
and let go of my child's hands
without apologies,
so I can turn the lock
once more.
The warmth of the sun wanes
signaling the end of summer.
Cool darkness bleeds onto
maple leaves tinting their jagged edges
glowing in the Harvest Moon.
Protection order-
the piercing silence of empty rooms.
Leslayann Schecterson
A DRAGON and A TIGER BRING HOME A MONKEY
It seemed it had only just been summer
The days long, sweet and carefree
And before then, early spring
Our first date, that one chilly March evening
Fast forward and officially it was now autumn
Five days past the equinox
When daylight and evening were equal partners
Leaves were starting to change
And we too were about to change
She arrived a week earlier than expected
Yet right on time
To celebrate our anniversary
Change inevitable, enabling growth
She brought us into the winter
More wiser, more cautious
More hopeful and thankful
And more enamored and in love
Than ever before
She was our light, our renewal
Our harvest and the winter of our content
She was all that was good and pure
And right in the world
What we had sown, what we reaped
A gift filled with promise
Beautiful, fragile
Unpredictable, ever-changing
Our Libra baby
Uniting her earth mother
And fire father
Bringing balance
And mooring
Terri J. Guttilla
MARKING MOMENTS
Our cat and our dog will not
Live to be eighty years old.
And only sixty percent of humans will.
Not my father.
Not my sister.
And not Roy or Gary,
Your trusty wingmen.
But here we are, facing
Our eighth decade, too old
To carry heavy stones,
But grateful for each new day.
We open our eyes to the mountain,
Where every dawn is born,
And the pink streaked clouds are never
The same. Later we welcome
The golden plover’s arrival alone at low tide
Ending her solo flight, thousands of miles
After the season’s first snow in Alaska,
And we celebrate Hawaii’s winter sighting of whales,
On the far horizon and the sweet gray
Rain clouds over the volcano, feeding the deep
And ancient rainforest, old and alive as we are,
Living as we do, through one day
And the next, with the sparrows, the doves
And the egrets, calling to one another
As the red dawn falls through the
Flame trees, lifting their wings,
Lifting our wings.
Rose Anna Higashi
BIPOLAR
Some days
I put on the mask of comedy
I am a heroine
whose song transcends
the shy girl with braces
and thick spectacles
Other times
I wear the veil of tragedy
stark as the wings
of a black butterfly
My woes and toils
have pulled down
the corners of my mouth
like two dumbbells
The mirror on the wall
has stealthily replaced
the smiling maiden
with a brooding matron
How can I find a balance
between anger and overjoy
the yin and yang?
I believe
in those placid days
without drama
Jackie Chou