All I Need--By Carolyn Martin--United States

All I Need

A few skyward things: one steady star

to guide, one constellation to bet

a myth upon, one quasar to break

the dark. The rest is ornament.

One mountain to announce it is ripe

for bulbs and seeds to multiply

without a first or second thought.

Birth deserves tranquility.

A frenzy of birds at sleep tide’s ebb,

tornados of gnats at dusk’s flow.

Two feral cats. Two red-tailed hawks.

Days that warrant wilding up.

A word for grace or luck or hope

when the mountain blocks my star.

In-the- bone love for all that’s lost.

Something born to lead me home.

(Previously published in The Way a Woman Knows)

Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired in Clackamas, Oregon, where she gardens, writes, and plays. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in journals throughout the US and UK, and her second collection, The Way a Woman Knows, was released in 2015 (www.thewayawomanknows). Since the only poem she wrote in high school was red-penciled "extremely maudlin," she is amazed she has continued to write.