new POEMS

• Balance
• Highway Driving
• Reasons for Disbelieving
• Flood Stage
• Long-lost characters
• ex libris
• Transmutation
• The Ten Suggestions

from SAGE

• Sage
• Fire
• Honeysuckle

EXTERNAL LINKS

• Andrew Litts
• Alexis Ford
• See a vide of Beth reading "Balance" at the Delaware Valley Grantmakers Conference (scroll down to "Video Highlights/Poetic Voices")

Balance

Find it in the young men, their low-slung
    jeans
and unstrung shoes, shuttling down the
    handrails.

Above, the El expresses itself down
    Broad Street
expresses us up to the high floor hustle...

... continue

Highway Driving

You were using the calm voice, low
    and unflappable,
as he accelerated and merged and
    centered himself
between the broken white lines...

... continue

Flood Stage

When the Mississippi crests far above
    flood stage,
it eventually floods itself back into
    its tributaries
and becomes one itself—a tributary
    I mean—no longer...

... continue

Transmutation

All of this and all I know are branches,
nature's chance encounters,
roots of choices, echoed voices speak.

My faith is in the questions...

... continue

Note: "Transmutation," based on the life of Charles Darwin, was set to music by composer Andrew Litts as part of "Dialogues with Darwin," a collaborative project between the American Philosophical Society and Network for New Music.

Reasons for Disbelieving

You are tangled
in my thoughts
this day after
long distance night....

... continue

Long-lost characters

In the heirloom photo, three women
    pose,
sepia and close-mouthed, enduring
bad teeth or a grim Kiev winter....

... continue

ex libris

We want
to own these
words,

turn pages
of knowledge

into what we know...

... continue

The Ten Suggestions

Let this come first.
What you have can be enough...

... continue

Note: "The Ten Suggestions" was set to music by composer Alexis Ford.