Emergent Poem by Maxine Chernoff

Like wasps
stinging the unkind world
where love is stretched
and painted green
the dumb world gleaming
like bells from a tower
in a painting
of a valley, where
a single puff of steam
translates the scene.
Where to travel
on the empty train?


To sonify a spinoff,
to spin a pearl
until its oyster closes
on resistance, until
its rock finds a ready
landing in dark water,
submerging to a place
beyond eyes and the soft
underpinning of words.

In spring you want more,
the pale leaf's beckoning,
the heart's easy notice,
sky and belief
paint a notion.
The crisp, unseeming world
readies for the task.
Tell it something
it can believe.