Sample Poetry

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

Dear Cynthia,
   
(a found poem)

I am submitting another poem.  It’s about the continuing miracle

Of dawn, which we tend to take for granted.  I am up early and so I

See this phenomenon, which never fails to excite me.  The dawn is

Always different:  its moment containing new spots of light, new

Possibilities, the chance of new thoughts.  Czeslaw Milosz wrote

That a moment is not just a blip of time, but an occurrence that

Also has substance, sometimes color, even sound.  I feel that way

About dawn and find a need to write about it.


                                                — Henry Berne

(from the Fall/Winter 2007-2008 Aurorean.)


Grass Smell, Bright Orange

 

Finished with the week’s work,

the silenced mowers on the trailer,

I inhale grass scent in still air.


I am a child at the picnic table,

a hand on my pet rabbit,

my father in a white T-shirt,

the sound of the rotary blades.

I helped him rake, he took me

for ice cream.


A single trill from high

in the pear blossoms,

a vainglorious Oriole,

starlings and robins seemingly

too self-conscious to sing

around such royalty.


My first bicycle from the town dump

I brushed Day-Glow orange,

ran the mile home from school

to ride until dusk when

mother called me for supper.


In the truck, ten lawns worth of tired,

I decide these are the purest unfettered joys

I have known.


                                                — Michael Tempesta  

(Fom the Spring/Summer 2007 Aurorean.)



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