Frank Boyer, Dave Holden, Bobbi Katz, Alison Koffler, Will Nixon, Richard Parisio, Kathryn Paulsen, Jo Pitkin, Gretchen Primack, Bertha Rogers, Annajon Russ, Victoria Sullivan and Dayl Wise
 

Sample Poem
 

Slabsides: John Burroughs’ Cabin, 
One Hundred Years Later

Drops of snowmelt rattle
from the steep porch roof,
its props of barkless cedar trunks
engraved by beetles,
marked as signposts: something
has passed, something
has not.  The celery patch you drained, cleared,
planted, black muck garden,
now grows red maples, young elms, yellow
birches where your spade struck
deep.  The spring where you drew
living water, clear source, rock-
lipped oracle, is stopped up.  Today
you would be pleased
to see your bark slab-
sided cabin with its fieldstone
chimney still here, perched
on its outcrop.  Peering
in you’d catch
the gleam of sun on yellow birch
walls in the gloom, all the shining
trunks bronze as the day you cut them.
Ashes of your last fire
brood in the stone urn
of the fireplace, its mantel
log vine-carved into spirals.  Tree wart
doorknob waits your open
hand.  Sun lays down new
light, melts old snow at your doorstep.
Today’s a visitor
who finds you home.

Rich Parisio