Two poets running through the redwoods

Both cut up and bruised from our travels

different stories

Rhymes

And Times

Stopping for two minutes to see

All the beauty inside the

Other

people come and go

Leaving,

Believe me was hard,

Two minutes,

directions shared,

Caring more and

Loving way more than we should

Sorry we could not stay longer.

Paths lit in

Opposite directions

An inspection of what could be

But knowing we were not mean to be

Going along our way

More bumps and bruises,

More beautiful poetry.

One flicker of the past

And a poem is made

To take the place of the

Time two poets were running in the redwoods

(River Spree, Berlin, Germany)

She Spree

- Avrina Joslin

She flows in parts not breaking but allowing slowly to collect in puddles or ponds and sometimes bays where the silver sail boats come to stay.

She’s come throttling through the wild, against stones and black rock, breaking into tinier and tinier crystals of the pure where intent is not separate from purpose or action.

She branches off from a mother whose blood she gives as she did, to orphans or children, the childless and the carrying, splitting into genealogy, spilling into reservoirs of organic womb.

She sprints in and out of action, rising and falling with bombs, walls, limbs decorating her banks with a chain of assorted events, their leftovers – smell of blood on a menstruating woman sniffed by dogs, forgotten by men.

She falls from cliffs as if her wings were lost to other winged beings who found her fit to fly along: amateur bird stepping off a cliff, falling a straight line to whirpools of undercurrent and swish.

At night she catches light on the mountainous pictures she draws on her skin and moves: a stretching game where your tattoos look like other things when you play with your skin.

She catches light and throws it away, making her darker and lighter under the sun, moon and canopies of trees who write history on her; a chronological accumulation of western wind on eastern heritage, hermitage packed neatly, under whose ribbons are conflicting currents

resting in peace. Her tadpoles, fish and dead debris drown to her floor where a few plants also grow. The dead can cap the alive, her leaves can gather dust but her water will wash it all away. She will sprint, spit, spread and resist.

(Christmas - Cardiff, Wales)

The Graveyard of Christmas Trees

- Thomas Stewart 

It is my job to rescue the Christmas tree. I do it every year.

Push aside black bags of summer clothes, crawl into the side- space full of dust. The box, noosed with brown sello-tape, has been stitched & dumped – returned. The Christmas joy all boxed-up.

It is time for its show. It is all dolled up, embroiled with lights, told to shine, controlled when the children scream. It is brought presents it can never open. It is left alone at night still burning.

*

I am very small sneaking down the dark corridor, going to the tree. It is not real, it will never die. It will not be tossed out, weeping and cracked. The tree will continue in this torment.

Even though I am small and young, I see the ugliness in its beauty. I take the tree away with me.  

*

This is the Graveyard of Christmas Trees. This is where the dead trees rest. This is where the dead trees hang up their hats. This is where they honour their dead.  

Their fleeced branches are empty of tinsel & bells – they have naked heads. We pass a dead red star by the iron gates. My Christmas tree is silent & numb.

The tree and I are barely alive, crouched with invisible weights.

The ugliness of its dead folk is more than its humiliation – it is innocent. I smell its tinsel, hear the bells, I sing a hymn to the trees’ wounds.

*

Plastic leaves shred onto white stone when we leave the graveyard. My tree goes back to its second life, its only other spot. It is slow & glum. It is mourning.

(Christmas in England)

Lux mundi

- Gwyneth Box

(Christmas - Palestine)

Christmas in a Snow Globe

- Alice Yousef

(to Amal, my late grandmother who was my Christmas)

Put Christmas away, this year our joy is deferred, a little wooden train without a railway He, the Son will be born, yet nothing red can stay birth, beauty, baubles with glitter and lights

our joy is deferred, a little wooden train without a railway the lament in my soul curls like holy, a wreath to a season not dead there's still birth, beauty, baubles laden in glitter and candle-light compact in a snow-globe, a protected scene

the lament in my soul curls like holy, a wreath to a season not dead as I pour the wine, hear the choiring children laugh on the streets, church-bells and shoppers racing the shots to give gifts, be kind

I pour the wine, hear myself laugh and choir along make wonder appear by dim candle-light give gifts, precious of being kind I shake the snow globe away from the eyes

make wonder, devoted by candle-light for He, the Son is born in Bethlehem on a night glorified his people dimming the lights of the houses, yet still chanting Gloria, Gloria - I shake the snow-globe away from the eyes