BEVERLY M. COLLINS
Beverly M. Collins grew up in Westfield, New Jersey, loves amusement parks, music and traveling. Collins applies lessons she learned from Songwriter Guild of America and the National Association of Record Industry Professionals to her poetry. She is the author of the book, Quiet Observations, and one of the 2012 prize winners for the California State Poetry Society. Her work has appeared in the California Quarterly, Poetry Speaks! Year of Great Poems and Poets Calendar. (Sourcebooks, Inc.). Beverly Collins often attends many readings around town, has worked with "Poets on Site" and has featured at the Cobalt Cafe, The Talking Stick, "Unbuckled" NoHo Poetry. She is a regular at Barnes and Noble Burbank monthly readings, as well as at The VillagePoets of Sunland-Tujunga Monthly poetry Reading Series.
Next
by Beverly M. Collins
From the tip-top of January
to the bottom of every December,
life is a continuum.
May we remember to remember.
There are no platforms on which we
halt. No arrivals at which we are landing.
There is only continuous movement.
Blend motion into all planning.
Next is a good four letter word that dances
on the tongue and illuminates the playgrounds
of our minds. Next can call loudly or soft
and subtle when it chimes.
Within the cold of winter remember next comes
fragrant flowers of spring. Next reminds us
there is no be-all or end-all to anything.
When riding a high tide or if low tide has one
feeling sadness or perplexed, know true muscle
can be found in how well we just say...Next!
MARLENE HITT
Marlene Hitt was the first Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga. She has been a member of the Chupa Rosa Writers of Sunland-Tujunga and the Foothills since its inception in 1985. In addition to poetry chapbooks, anthologies and readings, she has authored a non-fiction book Sunland-Tujunga, from Village to City. She served at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga as Museum Director and is now a docent there - every Sunday! Her poetry appeared in anthologies Meditations on Divine Names (2012) and Chopin with Cherries (2010). In addition to her poetry activities, she has served as history writer for the Foothill Leader and the Glendale News Press, the North Valley Reporter, the Voice of the Village newspaper, and the Shadow Hills Property Owners Association newsletter. She co-organizes the Monthly Readings of Village Poets at the Bolton Hall Museum. She has been honored as the Woman of Achievement by the Business and Professional Women's Club. She lives happily ever after with her husband Lloyd and an outdoor cat named Lautrémont.
Though I Have No Name
by Marlene Hitt
I yearn for trees, for the scent of grasses,
for the sounds of the meadow and for summer dust.
The ocean has come up beneath us and the sky
is itself a sea that falls in great drops night and day.
This box home my husband built does not please me,
a woman whose home was clean and dry, a woman
whose home was her reason to be alive.
My husband, Noah, and our children work,
as I do, to keep the animals fed and cared for.
A litter of kittens emerged this morning
and the lioness is full with new life. Her mate
roars with the need to run and posture and strut.
I am discouraged and fear the days ahead
heavy with the threat of starvation and of
never seeing land again. This water!
Forty days and more, not ebbing at all.
My family sits staring, despondent, and it is I
the mother, who must put my own fears
in a safe hiding place, pretend that all will be well.
We will shout for joy if the elephant can be free again
to roam, and the camel, and the birds to build nests.
I wish to spend an hour talking with neighbors
from our small village, of singing on the Sabbath.
Now, in this wet word turned up side down
we all wait. We all wait. We all wait.
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