Sample Poetry

The poems below were chosen as “Best Poems” and excerpted from the two most recent issues of the Aurorean. Poems were selected by independent judges. Rights remain with authors.

Beach Glass
(for Anne Cowles Pinkney)

We could be the neck of a milk bottle
or a bit of bobeche from a grand chandelier.

It doesn’t matter what we were a part of
before we were broken, only that we were

broken and a part of something
and that our young edges were sharply fragile
and our translucence too common.

We know of waves, and still, now and then
feel them vacuum the sand from beneath our feet
and pull us out and over and back, across the sand
as if we were something’s great hobby
tumbling in finer and finer and finer grit.

And it is the tumbling that matters
so much more than the approval
of combers or children, for if we have time
the tumbling will give us a texture
that transcends the standards
by which we are judged.

We remember so little
of how the tumbling smoothed us
only that, in the end, we are smooth.

by Jeff Roberts, from the Spring/Summer 2009 Aurorean

Wind in the Pine Trees

Of course it may be
as Thomas Merton suggests,
that no writing can say anything
that has not already been said better
by the wind in the pines trees.

But from the view of my look-out,
my post along the fence of the world,
there is not a pine tree to mention.

There are only the ruffled feathers
of the crow on the telephone line,
a light air on the surface of the page,
and a jazz vocalist blowing his breezy voice
through the speakers of the past.

There is only this wind-less room
and this fluttering heart
that has flown from the perch
of my darkened chest,
and climbs into the bright blue dome
of the windy sky.

by Chuck Smith, from the Fall/Winter 2008-2009 Aurorean