6 GROUNDCOVER NEWS POETRY Red skies at morning MICHELLE LARDIE-GUZEK Groundcover intern Can Love storm Such apparatuses of men That betray no guilt or recall For the brain-dead fashion They used and swore by? Such a lazy trudge through the shadows Fearful of what the light would reveal. Such Fear. Are you sure you would protect this Brother, you claimed you could never live without? Or would that imagined horizon rust? For as you hid behind that milky skin Wallowing in your fanciful aches and play deaths These children scream whispers, With whatever voice they can find In hopes of reaching the last of Compassion or Reason. Their desperate plea “Show us the love you claim to have” Just manages to portray a pain which is like A red sunrise on the raw and moaning sea. A mere warning of what is yet to come. Deep Time STEPHEN LEGGETT Groundcover contributor It is time which separates even more than space. Time is everywhere at once like an ocean and what we call the future is just leeward of that. It’s too early it’s too late we think we know what time it is. Our lives are compass needles spinning wildly on a vast ocean. What time is an ocean? APRIL 4, 2025 When Two Hummingbirds Meet STEPHEN LEGGETT A trumpet left in the rain valves askew the bell dented it probably croaks like a heron. Dreams may be abandoned but the notes are still there they remember they assemble ready to tumble out into the world in joyous release. A kind of humming those first notes those first coos and ahs in the cradle learning how the notes assemble and disperse. A Friend; A Human Instinct MICHELLE LARDIE-GUZEK A friend A person whom my mind can relax into its natural state around A person that I don’t need to constantly filter or translate all of my thoughts into Socially acceptable bite-sized pieces Pieces that can never seem to get across the exact extent of my thoughts or emotions So I am left stumbling over additional swallowable explanations and backstories A digression made necessary by the lack of understanding I perceive others will have of my very socially unacceptable problems Perceptions that are based in my belief that I am unacceptable Not capable of being understood by others Because I have little to no context for such a situation Context that I crave because to be understood is a sign of Connection that all humans desperately need to survive, and yet, in my case Are desperately and completely terrified of When two hummingbirds meet they pause suspended in air like hands over a piano uncertain of what notes to play. Their hearts beat like little drums. In the Year of the Dragon STEPHEN LEGGETT ‘So much trouble in the world’ Nothing is repeated exactly as it is repeated some people want a war any war will do so when a column of smoke rises from the trees we worry that our choices are dwindling wars sweep up history in a blaze of regret until everyone is wishing again for peace as if peace was ever more than a cloud passing as the sun begins to set and a red glow begins again spreading across the sky oh no we say that old mad dragon is loose again!
7 Publizr Home