ANDRENA ZAWINSKI
NOT THIS: Letter to a Son

I am thinking of another time: Providence,
you inside me dream begun
on Valentine's Day. Today I salvaged
from the basement flood a book stuffed
thick with scraps and scribbles, the one
in which I first wrote of you.
And from its pages fell a snapshot
that survived the pyrotechnics
of my old rage - in it was your father
smiling, not then yet to have come to manhood.
You never wanted me to tell you about him,
but I will tell you how we were:

He was high speed racing slick
New Hampshire backroads, lightning striking
turns with me at the back of the Norton; he was
a long Latin summer with the top down, natty pinache
lean-suited in white linen. I was all the stars
strung out spinning the Delmarva sky, his midnight
flower pilfered from a D. C. war memorial. Your father
was a way out, somewhere else, not my country,
the first of many more goodbyes.

Here in the old book where I stored words,
he slipped by the chronology of you
in ounces and inches, toes and fingers, arms
kissed by sun, hands announcing
starfish, stone and shell.
Even through those first and awful things -
broken finger, dizzy of virus and cold,
road kill dog, your cat a fever took one night -
he missed you playing with strings of new
language and his name you later would not
mark down for your own. He missed
what you were, summer grass suddenly tall
with the meaning of green.

And now, son, that you have come to manhood,
and you too have lost at love that packed up
a U. C. degree, first job, 10-speed, skis and hiking
boots into a new car, racing, as he did then,
the hills of Berkeley for Marin, I imagine you
in another picture behind the lines
of your picket fence before the tree heavy
with the yellow ripe surprise of lemons, waving

me off the day we last spent summer together chasing
sun through Wildcat Canyon under the miracle of sky,
watching wildflowers defy a winter of drought,
eating blackberries plucked fresh from the bush,
drunken in the scent of pinyon pine poem on air.

This is what I wish to imagine: you inside my arms,
cradled small against my heart where I would rock you,
spare your restless nights, not this melancholic
Nightshade dream where I play Perfidia, cross my arms
around my waist, close my eyes, hold on tight,
move real slow and moan, inhabiting
my old loss and your new pain - not this howling
as the beached seal must, head turned seaward
from the rocky western shore, staring through hollows
where once were eyes; not this poisoning
for which there is no antidote, traces lingering
the bloodstream, foundering the heart; not this
troublous wringing of hands, this dark
ceiling without a star; not this loss of love
repeating itself, like words weakly honed,
like a life under revision.

PEGGY MEEKS-KING
Only A Dream Of War

Only a dream or so it seemed
but so real.
The sky was blue from my window pane,
the clouds white, but this dream filled me with
fright.

My window faced east, the house I was standing in
was lovely and old.
In the land where freedom is in every corner, this I know,
for this I was told, country of my birth.
I looked up, the sky filled with silver and fire.
The silver-wings falling to the ground coming towards
the house I was standing in.

Taking a part of the house down as if this was meant
to be, but this was only a dream.

In the Streets before me was fighting and fear and blood of Valentine red as
if many hearts
had been opened to bleed to keep
this land sweet,
like i had never seen in this the land of the free,
home of the brave.

Up from my bed to my window
at dawn's first early light I see peace and
for the first time I know its price!