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      March 4, 2013Hardship in a Nice PlaceJack Ridl

      The roof on our house slants out
      over the garden and if it rains
      the water falls on what blossoms
      still arc in late August. My wife
      is sleeping through her day. There
      is a breeze here on the porch. There
      is a certain slant of light collapsing
      through the beech trees on the hill. One
      tree fell this afternoon. I could hear it
      cracking into the quiet, saw an angle
      of trunk begin to lean and then rustle
      its branches across the limbs along
      the stagger of woods. At night, sounds
      come I can never identify. It’s often
      like that, our long days lacking much
      of anything that can be named. My
      wife will sleep. I will walk back from
      the mailbox with our dog and wait.

       

      from #37 - Summer 2012

      Jack Ridl

      “I’m 67. Over the years why I write poems has twisted and turned and hopped and shifted in many ways. But one thing has stayed the same: writing poems places me with what matters in a world that pulls us every hour away from all that clings to our hearts. I love poems because they can connect us to what we might never discover. They’ve kept me always at ages 7 and 70.”