Nov 24, 2021 | Aging, Alexandrine, Gus Stevens, Irregular Rhyme, Quatrains
I am weary; I am not tired. Though only sleep and jest are true I do not think a rest will do. The river that once ran cold and clear now chokes with green. Mired with the accumulating silt of years. Youth was all constraint and indecision: a white-cold roiling to be...
Jul 22, 2020 | Gus Stevens, Quatrains, Rhymed Couplets
Even as we all are hurtling apart, following diverging vectors, there is comfort in the circling. Even our anchoring sun, who hectors the planets, orbits in a greater sky. We all circle and are circled by. We seek the very center that we fly from— the power that both...
Apr 14, 2020 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Irregular Rhyme, Quatrains, Seasons, Spring
I believe in the resurrection. With its birdsong and flowery filigree, springtime is a useful simile, but the meaning moves in only one direction. It is a life that was, and then was not: true flesh with dirt beneath the fingernails, an eye color that history has...
Dec 1, 2019 | Aging, Daughter, Grief, Gus Stevens, Quatrains
She wakes from her nap with bedhead and pillow creases on her cheek then whispers, “When it’s gark out, Momma coming home?” in toddler speak. I know correcting her lisp can wait for some other afternoon so I brush her hair back and confirm,...
Aug 16, 2018 | Grief, Guest Writer, Mark Hernberg, Mom, Quatrains, Whale
She swam to these shallow waters to give birth. Knowing only the quickening of her heart, the heart inside her; resonance of body within body, sea within sea. Her newborn calf sputtered brine, tasting the new waters. Each breath a new ocean. Again she sings him her...
May 18, 2017 | Quatrains, Seasons, Spring, The Work of Greater Minds
The cherry trees bend over and are shedding On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed. Other poems on Moss Kingdom about Spring: Spring by Edna St. Vincent...
