Natalia Corres

by Judy Kukuruza

Damp soil - clumps, clods, granules
Many parts - whole
Felt with hands, bare feet;
aroma of primitive abandonment

Everchanging sky - constantly shifting, moving
Intriguing blues, whites, grays,
Mirroring and holding colorful sunsets, dawns;
Surrounding all - but unreachable.
 
Mother ocean moving in and out -
giving life, taking life;
Blue, green, foamy white - pulling, pushing
rising, falling - stirring and soothing.

Wind, air - pushing soil, sky, waters.
Colorless - hot, cold, scary, comforting,
Howling, soughing, caressing, buffeting.
Air with power to give and take away.

Elements inherent to ALL life -
respected, enjoyed, feared - ACCEPTED
Heightening senses, appealing baseness
the terrible beauty of CONNECTION. 

Retired college instructor from CSUB and Bakersfield College. She published her memoir One Body/Many Souls in 2018, and later Poems to Ponder, Little Stories to Play with in Your Mind, and Letters. She publishes her blog, “Our Spiritual Journey” through Word Press.

by Carla Stanley

 
 Trains twine through my life.
 Distant sounds of trains moving in the night
 Bracket sleepless nights of childhood and old age.
 Trains travel through my town, 
 A few miles from my house.
  
 Child-I traveled on the train,
 Dad had a pass, 
 He worked for the railroad.
 Adult-living in Germany, 
 Trains were a way of life.
 An efficient way to get to town.
 Grandparent-flying to D.C. to see grandbabies,
 Taking the train back to California.
 What a thrill.
  
 Retiree-read before I travel.
 I appreciate 
 The engineering,
 The labor,
 The imagination
 That went into laying track, 
 Blowing holes in mountains,
 Across the United States.
 Trains to Arizona and the Grand Canyon
 Amaze me.
 The vastness of the land revealed to 
 The traveler. 

Carla Stanley is a retired Theater & English teacher. She is a Bakersfield native and spent 20 years as a military wife living in Oklahoma, Washington and Germany. She spends her time traveling with her husband (pre-COVID), writing, gardening, and walking her dog Sky.

by Dianne M. Buxton

  In Athens, then, truthsayers and foreign philosophers
 Retained their own quarters up on the hill.
 Dined by royal patrons, they would slip away, avoiding the palace women.
  At the foot of Apollo they laughed over mental puzzles
 Commented on gossip concerning the generals
 Inevitably thinking of war, they sobered -
 What is it exactly that philosophy should conquer?
  Our generals no longer indulge in such patronage
 The poets and the press form their own armies
 Formidable prisons provide them with silence and privacy
 They commit words of truth and wisdom to memory.
  Now armed with pen and paper, should I seek the tasteful phrases, 
 Twist some tantalizing ideas, entertain beneath the lights, create a diversion?
 Suggest some miracle is immanent? 

Dianne M. Buxton’s poetry can be seen in Global Poemic, Caveat Lector, The Griffin, Sanskrit, and The 2021 Writers of Kern Anthology. A graduate of the National Ballet School of Canada and an alumni of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in NYC, she retired from the performance and teaching in the dance world and now writes.