SPARK

Paria Canyon, Arizona, April 2008

Ray Sharp

Photo

All the Old Familiar Songs

By Ray Sharp

Response

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Oh my darling, sing to me

in this time of dreadful sorrow.

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Verses fly across the chasm

like birds on a treacherous crossing.

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They ignite in spontaneous flarings,

they plunge, exhausted, to icy depths,

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They stray into canyonlands

where words echo like folk songs:

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Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

Where have all the flowers gone?

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If I had a hammer. If I had my way,

I would tear this old building down.

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Inheritance

By Annmarie Lockhart

Inspiration Piece

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There are five years between the age that I am

now and the age at which my grandmother died.

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Our shared name differentiates us from siblings

but fits our places on either side of my mother.

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I know her pretty face only from aging photos;

my coloring and features are not hers.

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I never saw the lines of her palm;

we were not born under the same sign.

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Today, for the first time, I considered my own end

and if it would be at her time or in her way.

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The sounds of the crash, the pierce of the glass,

the crush of bone, the snap of neck, real for a moment,

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then gone again. Nothing more than repeated words

echoing like folk songs handed down through time.

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