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Cloud and Moon – Brillig

June 26, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

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[ 4 poems from Brillig ]
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Mooned
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Moon at my window wants to come in.
She has a beautiful black gown,
silky dark tresses gemmed with stars.
Moon-faced and pale with longing
she whispers with the tide
that slides up silent estuaries
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I’m lonely up here all by myself.
Your astros came but wouldn’t play.
Frightened of my beauty they flew away.
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What will I tell her, that my falling
silver hairs are mooncoins,
that my gray unkept robe is wolfskin
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just right for me to howl her praises?
But, oh, she’s wise to me, too many
faded lovers already to take another on.
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She slides a fan of cloud over her eyes
but just before, she winks at me.
Hey, poet, stay open for me another night.
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Bradley R. Strahan
from Brillig, Winter/Spring 2026. Created by Deborah Doolittle.
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An Elegance of Swans
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The predawn green-grown lawn filled with swans,
snow-soft swells or so they seemed. Subtle
as first fall of frost, wings wind-weathered,
the flock massed on the grass. Moon-tethered,
they began to glow. Feathers supple,
at home here as if they’d never flown.
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On this bright cold night,
one goose across the full moon.
Are we both alone?
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Paul Jones
from Brillig, Winter/Spring 2026. Created by Deborah Doolittle.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Interior Gear
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Travel before light.
Keep maps
of trails to overlooks
palm-sized, folded,
creases smoke-blackened.
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By firelight,
get around to writing
those letters to people
who like you,
but you refused to believe.
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Tell them absolute darkness
does not exist.
Everything moves.
Our bodies give off
infinitesimal radiation.
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Rob Merritt
from Brillig, Winter/Spring 2026. Created by Deborah Doolittle.
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cloudbound
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an imagined collaboration of Lafcadio Hearn and Matt Snyder
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the place
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business trip
the departures board lists
my hometown
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of the issuing clouds . . .
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alma mater
I chat up the beggar
about his t-shirt
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graves on a mountain
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stones
in the fog
in the potter’s field
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Matt Snyder
from Brillig, Winter/Spring 2026. Created by Deborah Doolittle.
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IMG_9468
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
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Brillig is created twice a year by Deborah Doolittle. Not only does she gather the poets and poems into a small universe where the lines can speak each other from dream into reality, but Deborah also prints and cuts and folds and glues to fabricate each small booklet that will become that season’s offering of Brillig. Each edition is a different theme, each episode is a different style of small hand-crafted booklet. Each creation of wordly imagery also joins with artistic imagery – woodcut, line drawing, collage – to unfold into the final amazing artifact within your hands. Marvelous!
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❁
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Hold a limited edition copy of Brillig in you own hands by using this order form. And consider submitting your own poetry for consideration: 3-5 previously unpublished poems, any subject, any style, 20 lines or fewer. Submit as a single .DOC attachment to brillig.mlm@gmail.com, or mail to BRILLIG: a micro lit mag / 103 Jean Circle / Jacksonville, NC 28540. Include a 3-4 sentence bio and postal address. And visit this earlier post featuring Brillig.
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❁
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Additional poetry at Verse and Image by:
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Matt Snyder
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
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2020-11-03a Doughton Park Tree
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Saturday Share – Richard Widerkehr

June 20, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

DSCN4899

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Saturday morning readers share:
Richard Widerkehr
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When You Ask About That Dream
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I’m lost in Yakima, but it’s more like New York.
As I trudge through abandoned buildings,
looking for my dog Zach, dead two years now,
things seem familiar, like a city
where I lost something—ashes,
a few small, cold stars.  A woman I don’t know
follows me through vestibules and alcoves
whose mailboxes have been jimmied out.
We heave open a wrought-iron door.
Zach hauls himself up when he sees me,
his fur matted, his body thin.
Absently, slowly, we walk down the street
as we did when the tumor
had weakened him.  I hear a thud
and turn. Near a rusty burn barrel,
Zach’s lying in a hole in the ground.
I bend to help him.  Low flames
lick at his fur, flicker down his side.
I pat at beige and brown patches
almost smoldering, put my arms around him,
feeling the strength across his chest—
this fallen king, a god in disguise,
who used to lie at my door
like a sleepy lion, who butted his head
into my lap when I worked at the typewriter,
who came whenever I asked.
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❁
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Missing The Owl
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You have to come look right now,
she says. A Great Horned Owl in the spruce tree
by our red house—I scan layers and levels
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in dark branches.  Nothing; then a bough
swings up, and it’s flown.  At least she saw
the tufted horns, wings that open, close.
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As if some beast of mercy had offered
this late chance, I gaze at the straight, gray trunk,
dead center of the tree,
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then turn to her lilacs, humble bees—
now, the smell of rain.
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❁
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These two selections are from Missing The Owl, my fifth book, (Shanti Arts Publications).  “When You Ask About That Dream” was first published in Open:  A Journal of Arts & Letters, and “Missing The Owl” was taken by Main Street Rag.
– Richard
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Additional poetry by Richard Widerkehr at Verse and Image:
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
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Communion – Grey Brown

June 19, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

insect
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[ 3 poems by Grey Brown ]
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Costume
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I am five, maybe six,
and my mother
is taking pictures of me
in my costume.
I stand statue still
before the hearth,
sneakers on,
plastic pumpkin in hand,
ready.
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I have chosen a princess dress
and a witch hat.
I like the way I look in purple
and pink, but I need the hat.
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My teenage brother walks by
and announces that
I cannot be both
a princess and a witch.
Because of the hat
I am bold and remind him
that he is too old for Halloween
and that no matter what I am,
witch, princess or sister,
he will not be getting candy.
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My mother does not say a word
but cocks an eyebrow
the way she does
when she is reading a good book.
Then, as a princess,
I bow.
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Grey Brown
from Communion, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press. Hickory, NC; © 2026
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❀    ❀    ❀
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On Belief
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My daughter learns of constellations,
the unfinished dot-to-dot
of Andromeda and Cassiopeia,
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the poor mother and baby bears
headless, missing paws.
She dreams of planets
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and their rings,
adoring moons
that spin and sing.
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Stargazing, we find our way
to a dark, empty field
to view the comet.
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My daughter imagines
bold strokes, a ball of light
with a vivid, streaming tail,
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cartoon crisp and lively colored.
But she finds only
a blurred hairball of dust and ice.
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more chaos than divine creation,
at best, the whorled thumbprint
of some god, preoccupied.
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Grey Brown
from Communion, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press. Hickory, NC; © 2026
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I Hate October
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I just seem to lose family and friends
as the light angles down—
my grandmother to colon cancer,
the neighbor’s daughter
who just overdosed,
my dearest friend tucked in a shawl,
the book falling from his hand.
They all seem to let go,
as daylight wanes
and a cool hand disturbs the earth.
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I talk more to my mother
at this time of year,
but she is of little help,
so bad at living herself,
her drinking and smoking.
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She passed in the fall
of her fifty-ninth year.
She was an ardent fan
of witches and ghosts,
pumpkins and gourds.
I still decorate for her
trying to do my best
with the darkness.
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Grey Brown
from Communion, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press. Hickory, NC; © 2026
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Last week I caught a portion of an interview with an avant garde artist describing his latest installation. The interviewer asked what message the artist intended his art to convey. The artist replied, “A bad poem descends into meaning.” Well, that is certainly one statement that has opted not to descend into meaning. What is a good poem, then? Incomprehensible?
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Maybe a good poem does hold meaning, but close, cupped in its hands. The reader, craning for a glimpse, is encouraged to open his or her own hands and discover what meaning may be found within. The good poem is not a meal cut into bits for a toothless child; it is an enticement for the complex palate. And reading a poem is no dry exercise in wheedling out the poet’s intent; it is savoring, experiencing. The poem doesn’t descend into meaning. The reader does.
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Grey Brown’s poems in Communion, taken one by one, do not descend – they hover. Each one flashes into existence, the sudden arrival of a hummingbird. It pauses in flight and for a moment we can count every exquisite feather of its crimson gorget, but its wings are still whirring too fast to see. And then the next poem arrives. Line by line, page by page, the reader begins to perceive what is cupped in the poet’s hands. A sacrament that promises grace and life? A keen blade to mingle the blood of both reader and writer alike?
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The book’s introduction defines communion as the sharing or exchange of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level. These poems are precisely such a serial exchange, linked in sequence of unfolding awareness, joined together not only by the progression of years and generations but also by the uncertainty, disappointment, and revelation that are inherent in one’s personal search for meaning. With the turn of each page, I find myself reflecting on my own fears and failures. Is there any hope for salvation? The poet grants a glimpse: none of us ever really survive, / but we get by.
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❀
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Grey Brown (Chapel Hill, NC) is the founder of the Literary Arts Program of the Health Arts Network at Duke and served as director for 25 years. Communion is her second full length poetry collection and is available from Redhawk Publications.
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Additional poetry by Grey Brown at Verse and Image:
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
Doughton Park Tree, 2022-05-17B
 . 
 . 

Posted in family, Imagery | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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