Issue 16
Winter 2004
Harding Stedler
Harding Stedler received his Ph.D. from Florida State University in Tallahassee. He retired from Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio, after 34 years of teaching English. He has established a writing scholarship for poets at Shawnee State, and the first award will be made this year.
OCTOBER DIAMONDS
Whitecaps glimmer in the sun
as winter rides October in.
The lake is anything but still.
Autumn hues give color to the trees
that wrap the lake to save the ducks.
Sentinels stand watch along the shoreline,
branchless now and poised
to join their fallen brothers.
I come to watch young willows bend
and berry vines turn purple.
I come to watch floating diamonds
ease their way to shore.
I come to watch the missing anglers
whose lines are snarled in treetops
and whose dreams are buried
somewhere in the deep.
HONEYCOMBED HEART
My heart is but a shell
left from your dying,
and loneliness dwells inside
its porous chambers.
At night, I feel the pain
of emptiness at play.
I try to sleep away the hurt,
but it has no cure.
I am taunted by
its unrelenting cruelty.
Daylight steers me
toward duties of the day,
where I forget the anguish
of sleepless nights.
In turn, my labors become
the antidote to suffering.
REMEMBERING THE SNOWMEN
October is laying carpet
for the snowmen,
overlapping leaf-sized tile
in layers creating cushions.
Reds and yellows,
in camouflage, mix,
then allow the sun
to steal their pigment.
December snowmen
will no longer have to shiver
on the heels of arctic blizzards.
Their feet will be nestled
where autumn remembered
her guests.