No Regrets Fall 2019

No Regrets Journal

Fall 2019 Issue 27 Clayton Medeiros

No Regrets, a journal of poetry, prose and images about the exploration of being and meaning.

Clayton Medeiros, Editor, Poet, Photographer, Collage Artist claymedeiros@aol.com Neil McKay (Johnny Trash), Webmaster Submissions are by invitation of the editor Epublishing http://issuu.com/claymedeiros/docs Facebook page No Regrets Journal, haikus poems and photographs https://www.facebook.com/NoRegretsJournal

Northwest Autumn early morning gray the clouds gray the day gray the fog gray the horizon gray the island shadows gray the cedar siding gray the shake roof gray the impatient cat gray the kitchen mouse




Almost Winter Wistful Wintry Wind Blown Gray clouds End of day Darkness Descends

Star Light When a star’s ancient light Finally arrives at the moon dark Path of the back garden How much of its light is left with me How much continues on

Evening Ever grayer clouds muffle Sunset shadowed islands Leave specks of human light Unknown in time's corridors When nascent stars interviewed For inclusion in this Or another universe Of disappearing galaxies Shared black hole secrets

Bernadette, My Mother and Artemis Later in life when Bernadette walked the beach Neighborhood dogs would join her along the path One by one and accompany her to and from In keeping with Acadian tradition My mother had many middle names Included among them Artemis the Moon Goddess Homer’s Mistress of the Hunt Twin sister of Apollo Accompanied by hunting dogs Especially attentive to the needs of the young Overseer of chastity and child birth Dancer in meadows marshes forests Surrounded by nymphs including the Naiads Of springs, rivers, ponds and lakes




Boy and Cat Like a spool of thread a memory unravels Down the slight slope of the living room From one window to another reveals red thread Framed by the polished 1930’s oak floor Shadowed scenes easily traversed By a blonde haired boy closely followed By a black and white cat enticed To chase round and round Until the thread runs out

Lost and Found Will what is lost in darkness Be there in morning light Amnesty between light and dark An assurance of continuity In the new day In the new darkness

Sir Isaac Newton What is it that divides Lucidity from darkness Opaque from lucid Perhaps like Newton’s prism Spreads light in to the world Defines rainbows in the sky Sun bright misty waterfalls Ever hopeful of alchemical wonders In search of ultimate answers About lead gold and salvation For centuries Scholars Hid his mystical writings

Electromagnetic Love According to poets According to story tellers No rules encompass love and war Other than all being fair Perhaps physics provides insight Electromagnetic forces meet Positive and negative attract Negative repulses negative Positive repulses positive Endless confluence Endless divergence

Being For Joseph Campbell

Immortality

Being merged with the universe

Shared with stars and galaxies

Prophets understand

The hidden garden

Where we dwell even now

There is no banishment

The kingdom is within

Now and forever

For Adrienne Rich Utter darkness No moonish light Not a single star Nature’s black out Love still possible Between us Among us A sense of time A sense of place Together We await Another dawn

On Reading Marie Ponsot Again Swimming through time Her voice the air of summer Let us dream together A sense of time A sense of place Something shared silently Desperate for elusive answers Chose to love in spite of because of as opposed to Does time know what is now then yet to be Reluctant memories appear Seem sudden after all these years A sense of unexpected certainty

Merriam Webster Falls In Love Does love have a purview A limit to purpose A limit to scope A limit to intention Does love establish a range Of vision Of understanding Of cognizance Perhaps love simply brings passion brings commitment brings compassion  

Secrets His conversation’s irrigated With a sense of secrets Obfuscations Nothing straight and narrow Nothing from point A to point B Listeners soon lose any sense Of beginning middle or end Finally silence simple and clear

Ancestors My genotype inheritance from my parents From all of their ancestors With allowance for personal variation My phenotype nudged by my environment Offers selected and unselected variation Epigenetics listen for trauma

Wings Why not wings Wouldn’t it all be better If there were wings One could suddenly Rise above the fray Strike out for blue skies