| By Allegra Jostad Silberstein In the west a great vermillion ball... the sun sinking into a wall of blue smoke darkening as if being filled with something like a Burgundy Wine until it is swallowed and disappears from my sight. I continue homeward on I-80... in a small space of flaxen light above the Coast Range a red lower lip of sun appears but soon sinks into the upper and is gone. Within earth there is the word art... I have watched it in the western sky; and here at home in the shades of dusk my thoughts wander and I wonder if Atlas wearies of holding up the earth. |
Rain Drops on Feather by Allyson Seconds |
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MIGRATIONS
By Allegra Jostad Silberstein —after viewing Flight of Birds by Morris Graves As if one body a thousand birds fly together like a fish swimming in the sky, wings drum in the night feather tissue streaming touched by the wind and you—you plunge into darkness to a place that may not exist —migrations called love— echoes sound in a dream-book pages opened by the wind —migrations called spirit— as if one body a thousand words repeating like the chiming of a bell... and how does the butterfly the monarch find its way home... |
Hands Remember by Christian DeLaO |
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FEATHERS AND BONES
By Allegra Jostad Silberstein I saw a documentary: a film showing an act of faith and healing after the holocaust... Jewish men and women gathering in the bones found at a mass burial site, gathering them in to give respect , to place them in Jewish Cemetery in ritual remembrance... here—this must be a skullgathering in the bones into plain plank coffins borne by dark cloaked men to the cemetery gathering, in remembrance to place them in a grave. Burial songs sung the fourth commandment honored —so much that is unspeakable— to sit and watch almost too much to bear. Better to be there gathering the skeletal harvest than this helpless agony that holds me taut, until at last comes the release of tears... out of silence out of winter snow falling like feathers, a baby's soft croon blossoms the grey branch of this solemn day— |
 Allegra Jostad Silberstein |
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