First Tree

By Sharon Lask Munson

He trudges down from the hills through knee deep snow dragging our first Christmas tree

positions the tall fir by the front window where the pale light of a winter’s day illuminates a bird nest hidden deep in its branches.

Speechless, we stare at the gift aware of the legend

luck, health, and happiness brought to those who are so fortunate.

Alan Cohen’s first publication as a poet was in the PTA Newsletter when he was 10 years old. He graduated Farmingdale High School (where he was Poetry Editor of the magazine, The Bard), Vassar College (with a BA in English) and University of California at Davis Medical School, did his internship in Boston and his residency in Hawaii, and was then a Primary Care physician, teacher, and Chief of Primary Care at the VA, first in Fresno, CA and later in Roseburg, OR. He was nominated for his performance in Fresno for the 2012 VA Mark Wolcott Award for Excellence in Clinical Care Leadership. He has gone on writing poems for 60 years and, now retired from medicine, is beginning to share some of his discoveries. He has had a poem (“Autopsy”) and a medical letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine and, more recently, an article called “Annals of Communication: Giving a Patient a Diagnosis and Other Idioms In Development” in the American Journal of Medicine; and has had poems published in various publications. He had an honorable mention in Ninth Annual Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest; and has had letters to the editor in the New Yorker and Poetry Magazine. He’s been married to Anita for 41 years, and they’ve lived in Eugene, OR these past 11. Gaiyle J. Connolly, a poet and artist from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, has numerous publications to her credit, some of them prize-winning. They appear in local and international periodicals and journals. Her collection of poetry, Lifelines, which she also illustrated, was published in 2015. Her background of several ethnicities, love of art and travel and devotion to social justice are reflected in her work. Her readership includes Canada, the United States, Mexico and India. She is Past President of the Tower Poetry Society in Hamilton and has been active in poetry groups in Mexico. She is at the moment working on her second book of poetry for which once again she will provide illustrations. As a change of pace, she is trying her hand at short story writing inspired by her childhood years spent in rural Quebec.

Stella Mazur Preda is a resident of Waterdown, Ontario, Canada. Having retired from elementary teaching in Toronto, she is owner and publisher of Serengeti Press, a small press publishing company, located in the Hamilton area. Since its opening in 2003, Serengeti Press has published 43 Canadian books. Serengeti Press is now temporarily on hiatus. Stella Mazur Preda has been published in numerous Canadian anthologies and some US, most notably the purchase of her poem My Mother’s Kitchen by Penguin Books, New York. Stella has released four previous books, Butterfly Dreams (Serengeti Press, 2003); Witness, Anthology of Poetry (Serengeti Press, 2004), edited by John B. Lee; From Rainbow Bridge to Catnip Fields (Serengeti Press, 2007) The Fourth Dimension, (Serengeti Press, 2012). She is a current member of Tower Poetry Society in Hamilton, Ontario and The Ontario Poetry Society. Stella is currently working on her fifth book, Tapestry, based on the life of her aunt and written completely in poetic form.

Sharon Lask Munson was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She taught school in England, Germany, Okinawa, and Puerto Rico before driving to Anchorage, Alaska and staying for the next twenty years. She is a retired teacher, poet, coffee addict, old movie enthusiast, lover of road trips—with many published poems, two chapbooks, and two full-length books of poetry. She now lives and writes in Eugene, Oregon. She says many things motivate her to write: a mood, a memory, the smell of cooking, burning leaves, a windy day, rain, fog, something observed or overheard—and of course, imagination. She has a pin that says, “I Make Things Up.” You can find her at www.sharonlaskmunson.com