Poet's Corner
The poems below were shared by EPIC writers Gerald Bigelow, Kristina Stapleton and James Backstrom
at the recent Friends of the Library meeting
at the recent Friends of the Library meeting
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Remembering My Grandfather
As time passes, the silent snowfall, nestles deep, branching from trees to roof top eves, gathering in spaces, time tied to memories, memories to time, the bristles of my artist brush, stiff, wiry, like my Grandpa’s beard, paint memories of times past, Grandpa, I can no longer touch you, I can only touch the things that you touched, hold the things that you held, I still have your pocket watch, a gold 21 jewel Bulova, silent like your voice, stored, deep, in the recesses of a top dresser drawer, daily, I give 22 precise turns on the crown, setting in motion, an awakening- anticipated, a slumber- broken, the breath of each movement, a gift- celebrated, the coming of memories, synced with time, soon, ticking without notice, the heartbeat of time, the memory of your voice, fading, deep into the silent snowfall. - Gerald M. Bigelow Warmth
Warmth is not just a crackling fire, alive with wafting fragrant cedar aromas it is more than a puppy snuggle, on a cold winter’s night warmth is an emotional statement of comfort! for some of us, The Blues, not always warm, brings comfort when Nina Simone sings, “I’m gonna to put a spell on you” -You believe- -You feel- You are warmed by, an emotion, whose depth turns the soil of your soul when Ray Charles sings, darkness becomes light the warmth of the Blues cuddles the soul, diminishing the ingrained pains of generations The Blues of being Black is not merely the reality of being Black, it is the constant, daily reminder, that you are Black! The Blues is a mystical meditation, reaching back, not broken by separation, the pain of the lash, nor the threat of night riders, The Blues is the blanket, that covers the unspoken sins of society, warmth is comfort! try living a life, never being comfortable, eyes always on you, constantly feeling like, a lost lamb in a pack of wolves. - Gerald M. Bigelow 
Poet Gerald Bigelow
BREAKUP AT THE CECIL HOTEL
It is an expanding universe where the intimacy that sparked whole writhing families of blame, shame, and unconditional love relax out into distance and calm memory regretfully enjoyed at leisure while reclining on this king size bed as we sail apart from Egypt into forever. The breeze-blown chandeliers stir up, rocking high in the 12-foot ceilings of this hotel in Alexandria with their crystal bells quivering and chiming in the dusk, each bell a star twirled in a new universe. Laying under that music we join a cosmic evening of motes floating in circles as mysterious as the swirl around the sinking head of a crocodile in the night time Nile who left a spiral of stars on the surface where his eyes had stared hard. The was of being turns into the now of dust Stardust. Once again All tinkling with the cut glass sounds of the celeste and the ring expands out from the place where we plunged into that ringing universe with a shoreless wave goodbye. ~Kristina Stapleton ANTIHISTAMINE
The dizziness in the busy store Where the colors swim And the numb mind struggles When the checker asks “Did you? Did you find everything?” The cart is heaped, but really Did you find it all, down To the last thing you need? Like the head cold aching in the temple Of your frontal lobed brain It is the thing lasting longer Than you needed it. Achingly slowed down – how How how can you respond? I needed the sun, a beach chair, A pretty drink with an umbrella, I needed a rich and patient lover, A warmer coat, a brighter future, I couldn’t find them anywhere. I hear myself saying “Antihistamine” And the stock boy runs for it. ~ Kristina Stapleton 
Poet Kristina Stapleton
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Yellow Field
Outside the air is alive with gnats and green-backed flies, bumblebees and hornets, honey bees and wasps that dance around dying mud puddles where larvae twitch and pollywogs waggle in the shallows like sharks. Sword and bracken fern, trillium and falling purple stars of bittersweet night shade tangle in a greenbelt. An inchworm humps up a leaf beneath a watchful robin whose twitter and flutter prolongs the morphined timelessness of patients dying in the hospice. Nurses move among them like apparitions speaking tenderly while adjusting IVs and the relative agony of coming to terms. Outside a hummingbird needles fuchsia blooms that swoon over the balcony. You asked me to bring your Peterson Guide to give a name to the singing green wings. It sits unopened on your night stand. Now you dream of the rednecked country of your youth, of a swollen trout stream in Western Montana. In your moments of near lucidity. you tell me how rainbow slide in the rush And hold themselves in equilibrium with the current, how you might slip behind a big stone yourself into an eddy of time, drinking the sweet waters, emerging in the smoke of dawn when all of this is done, To become translucent in the warming sun, crossing a yellow field like a rippling breeze. --James Backstrom The Pygmy Owl
I never met Athena, but I knew Bonnie Threlkheld, the smartest kid in the 5th Grade, reading Tolkein at ten and multiplying fractions in her head. Once I found a small owl dead on the side of the road stiffened in rigor mortis, all feathers and perfect eyes. She must have flown into a rushing car Her death the sum of the blunt force of her hunting desire and draw of the bright beam of the headlight of some weary traveler trying to illuminate the next sharp corner on Grimm’s Hill Road on a moonless night. I nestled her in tissue and moss in a shoebox. With my mother’s gardening trowel I hollowed a tomb from the red mulch of a big cedar stump crowned in huckleberry. I knew little of the funerary arts or ceremony-- only what I gleaned from my Illustrated Children’s Bible my reward for a nearly perfect recitation of the Lord’s prayer in Sunday School at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. I added a third “forever” which made Pastor Erickson smile. I dug out a white granite stone from the creek bed as heavy as a medicine ball. It took two hands to lift it into place and seal away the tomb for eternity. By fifth grade, we all knew of the wisdom of owls. I was the second to last boy standing in the Spelling Bee that Bonnie won. I had a big vocabulary even if I couldn’t spell every word in Webster's Dictionary. Still, I congratulated her when she proclaimed letter by letter, b-d-e-l-l-i-u-m, bdellium, a resin used in perfumes. Who else knew of silent “Bs,” double “Ls,” and an “I” pronounced like a “long E?” I’d read about Athena and her jealousy. Bonnie, though, seemed sweet and naïve. Her hand, warm and soft when I shook it. She might have heard about curiosity and cats, She might have been friends with Hobbits, but I knew about owls and beacons of pure light. - James Backstrom Working from Home
Looking out my window into the greenbelt I am taking inventory of the various shades of leaves as they open, yawning in a wet spring. The willow first, then the red alder and bigleaf maple after a showy display. Not to be outdone, the bitter cherry, in a white bouquet like a jilted bride, and the red elderberry with creamy cones of inflorescence now wilt above waves of Himalayan blackberry whose invasion is stalled only by an old wooden fence in need of repair. I can’t see it from here, but a misguided hazelnut grows maybe 200 feet to the south. Its twisted branches chart rising uncertainty in the markets. I take my coffee outside and catch up on the office gossip with the incessant chickadees and a song sparrow who almost majored in music but settled on business. Deeper in the woods where the ground stays marshy into August, domineering spruce and a shaggy red cedar dust the windows of the undriven cars along our street. Near the green pond, black cottonwood await a little heat to let go clouds of seedy hope. The recovery is still a little beyond us. Our morning meeting again focuses on the issue of rabbits. Acres reserved for native growth and still they nibble in our lawn in the early mornings and evenings when the light is soft and kind. “Their anxiety is their safety,” says my beautiful boss, “They’re twitchy and wary, scampering from shadows.” I’ve been sleeping with her for years and everyone here knows it. On Saturday, I think--the days blur together-- I heard two young eagles whistle before I saw them playing in the sky above, wings in soaring arcs. The rabbits no doubt burrowed away in nuzzling safety. Even the handsome coyote I sometimes see with a tail nearly as bushy as a fox looks more hungry than cunning. Someone’s called in a specialist, a feral calico, lovely and murderous, here to cull the redundant, to make the necessary optimization. She suns on a three-man rock in the afternoon. What’s her per diem? I’ve watched her go mousing in the groundcover, or take a songbird mid chorus, leaping like sudden tragedy into the purple lilac I planted some years ago for the boss’ birthday. Now the calico’s taken the initiative on the rabbit situation. I watch incredulously as she trots towards a hole in the fence with a bunny nearly her size, carrying it away like a naughty kitten. Lori, across the street, feeds the feral one with her own cats, but still the calico stalks, caching what she cannot eat, domesticated to a degree like we are, but always on the hunt. --James Backstrom 
Poet James Backstrom
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