Sinner Sinner by Christine Anne Borra

I am a sinner of great degree
I wish to list my sins for Thee

But where I start, its hard to know
My life You said is like driven snow

So you see dear God do you need to hear
My list of sins said loud and clear

I think you should in all Your might
Know the sins I committed alright?

For what is the purpose that I must bestow
To You my sins you already know?

And how on earth will an earthly prayer
Miraculously make sins disappear

So it seems the act of contrition be
Less about You and more about me

Amen

The Gardener by Christine Anne Borra

roses show and mingle, clipped tight against
the white steel frame of the old wire fence
nurtured from unwanted sticks, like children

across the worn driveway crimson petals spill
announcing the end; their bloom brief and delightful
as their moment ends, another competes for place

the gardener administers brutal love as she cuts
and trains, the vase of life for a while is full
until the last petal falls exposing her work

now vulnerable arms stretch from mature roots
unsure and naked they face the harshness of winter
are they strong enough to endure the elements of life

the coming winter has stripped them bare to the waist
it is useless to cry for their lost youthful beauty
so they grow thorns upon thorns of protection

forgotten for now; they will lie dormant
until the burst of new life brings them back
to the notice of the gardener, to marvel again

her handwork, her legacy, pruned to create perfection

TUESDAY by John Smallshaw

It was Tuesday late in the day when we met

and raining so hard we were both soaking wet.

I talked to her like she was an old friend

And I realised soon I didn’t want this to end.

So I said “fancy a coffee “ even though it was late

She grinned and said “shall we call this a date”

And we talked as we walked and it got really late

So I said “let me walk you home,at least to your gate”

We got to her house and she said “coming for a drink”

“Yes please” I replied I didn’t need to think.

The evening passed to morning we laughed and we joked

And saw the new day dawning.

Then we kissed and my heart missed a beat

Then we kissed again..a double measure..neat.

Her lips tasted of the morning mist and once again we tenderly kissed

And undressed as the Sun’s rays hit the counterpane

and I knew I’d never be the same.

I kissed her eyes,her neck and ears

It nearly brought this grown man to tears.

She whispered “don’t rush just take your time

and you and me will make each other mine.

If I ever thought that I wanted to die I now know for sure

that this was a lie.

She made me want to live

She made me want to give

and after when we felt just so..her cat jumped up and bit my toe

But we laughed and began to touch and I wanted her so much.

Then later over a cup of tea

She said “ does that mean you really like me”

“Yes” I said,”I really love your feet and my heart skipped another beat

I love the way you sway

I love the things you say

Your nakedness is branded on my brain”

My heart was racing like a train.

She smiled and said “ I like you too”

I said “ I want to make love with you”

though I’ve not had too many lovers she took me under her bedcovers

and heavens did she make me moan and yell

By doing…

Well a gentleman just doesn’t tell.

Then the bell went clang

The telephone rang..I opened my eyes and to my surprise

I was alone in my room..it might as well be a tomb.

Just another wet dream though for a while it did seem

So so real..

So so good …
but then I suppose it would.

The Turtle and the Stone by Asa Boxer

The turtle moves as slowly as he does,
because he desires to be counted
among the stone-cold, the rock-solid.

The turtle moves as carefully as he does,
because he wants to live forever
and somewhere in his amphibious brain,

the longevity of coral, the persistence
of mountains and boulders have impressed
him with their stubborn immobility.

The turtle is but a step away from stone,
and he hopes, each day, to slow his pace,
to approach, within a fraction, a dead halt,

and thus come so near death as to learn
the secrets of eternity, and strike the deal
struck by stone.

The Damselfly by Asa Boxer

She is a surveyor of the lakefront, the forest, and the field.
Shifting from angle to angle, the damselfly stops at intervals
to triangulate the picture. She dead-halts in air, threadbare
wings moving so fast, they disappear and leave her dangling,

perfectly still, a hovering stick, a broken rule. She darts
and ducks the deadly possibilities. Her survival depends
upon her ability to distinguish between lizard and rock.
She can’t afford to confuse the quality of patience

with the unshakeable promise of stone. The lizards
attract her with the humility of their devotions, imitating
the hard modesty of pebble and rock. From their head-bones
to their tails, they offer the safe shelter of a jagged ridge.

But theirs is the cold hunger of stone. In her world,
even the rocks hide deadly tongues. This is why
the damselfly darts and flits and buzzes in fits.
She too grows stiff as stone, ever on edge,

anticipating a sudden softening of the hard world,
expecting an agile pounce, awaiting a limber lunge.
She only settles because she must. She’s wired stiff
on a turtle’s back, her thousand eyes alert but unaware

that an eyeball — slow as the world’s turning —
has peeled back its green lid, that a wrinkled head
has decided to inch toward water. The mountains
and the rooted trees are about to topple, the anchored

lake, about to spill its awful weight. She hovers in place
as the turtle-shell leaves her feet with a gulp. She is elated.
She is the measure that flies in the face of nature. Now,
as the damselfly passes, every stone holds its tongue.

The Lobster by Asa Boxer

Sunk behind its dingy window
in a supermarket aquarium,
the lobster turns a muzzy eye
on the great élan of air.

Exposed to every scrutiny; it waits,
claws bound, an antenna snapped.
Not a crawl-space, nor a shadow,
still as stone; invisible, it hopes.

It hopes a lobster’s coral hopes,
cramped upon a shallow shelf.
But its brains cannot conceive the sea
outside the lobster-shell. Desire, thus,

keeps slim to fit the narrow life within.
You will never hear the baffled lobster cry,
“What crime could be so great it moved the sea
to single-out a bloated shrimp like me?”

It’s a muffled clatter, this life that smudges by:
rattling cartloads of death perambulate past;
smutchy children nose and thump the glass;
vague eyes and teeth wink pearl hints

of what’s to come. This wispy world
suffused with light; a lobster’s carnival-
afterlife. Where each impression colours and brews
through nerve, and muscle, and sinew.

Where a thorny heat keeps life fired
to a reddening shriek. And God,
God boils it through.

Grease and Rust by Asa Boxer

Every tool is the anointed king of its work:
even as it waits and fades into the general mess,
even if it sinks to the status of a handle
poking from a box behind the curtain

beneath the counter, a wire coiled
round the grip, its head near drowned
in a pool of screws... A coat of oil
repels corruption while the handle waits.

The vise is seasoned black with grease.
Black grease is cleanest in the shop
where rust is the enemy; clean means
strongholds of metal free of rust.

Everything blessed with oil, like the hair
of heroes and saints, prophets and messiahs.
Grease fills the surface-scratch that’ll never heal,
settles deep into the score against all agents of rust.

Each tool is patient and confident it is meant
for the job it was designed to do best; it will wait
if it is used for only a moment in a rock’s life
or for a thousand years in the tribal life, it will wait.

The workman has observed this waiting,
this slouched hanging from the board,
like the one square hanging in the ready
with a level to get it all straight

the way the other levels laid aside wait
with bubbles of air, like held breaths that can tell
when all is aligned and gravity agrees
that the work is plumb with the heart of the world.

Some say the patience of the workman
is the virtue of his shop, but, truly, the virtue
is motion. Rest is not how things get done.
Rest is how rust creeps into the world.