Marc Petrie’s poetry collections include Poems of Nature and Despair and Then All Goes Blue. His latest book is From the Anthropocene from Cold River Press. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Book of Matches, the Altadena Review, California Quarterly, and City Lights Review. He teaches math at Willard Intermediate School in Santa Ana, California. He lives in Tustin, California with his wife Amy and their two dogs.
 
Laguna Beach Dharma
 
A broken kelp bulb
luminous on the sand,
absorbs shimmering sea light
ocean’s reflections.
 
Silver droplets of light
intermingle with aquamarine tones
spread into a white glow
to the far horizon.
 
I give myself to the sea today—
the sand, the water, the waves,
the bracing cold of March.
 
The power of the planet
carries me to shore
in the curl of a wave.
.
I find my way up from the beach,
with nothing to show for my effort.
 
Marc Petrie
from: From the Anthropocene
 
Jeanine Stevens is a California poet by way of Indiana. Her latest book, Left Handed Hummingbird, Clare Songbirds Publishing House, recalls “glimpsed wonders and lose fragments and threads of a poetic life.” Other books include No Lunch Among the Day Stars, Cold River Press, Limberlost and Inheritor, Future Cycle Press and Sailing on Milkweed, Cherry Grove Collections. She has a number of chapbooks including award winning Gertrude Sitting: Portraits of Women, Heartland Review Chapbook Contest, and Brief Immensity, Finishing Line Press Prize. Other awards are from The MacGuffin Poet Hunt, William Stafford Award, The Ekphrasis Prize, The Stockton Arts Commission, WOMR Cape Cod Community Radio National Poetry Contest, Western Archipelago Review, Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference, and Soulmaking. Jeanine’s poetry has appeared in Evansville Review, Bards West, Women in a Golden State, North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review, Comstock Review, Rosebud, Poet Lore, and Muse. She has been editor of newsletters, judged poetry contests and served as poetry workshop facilitator. She studied poetry at U.C. Davis and CSU Sacramento, has an M.A. in Anthropology and a Doctorate in Education. Jeanine is Professor Emerita at American River College and a member of the Community of Writers. She lives in Sacramento and Lake Tahoe with her husband Greg Chalpin.
 
Black Ice
 
Shops that cater to vacationers close.
If you want a post card or souvenir shot glass,
check out the local CVS.
The slow cadence of late Autumn, a good time
to check the spatter of moth holes
on wool cardigans.
Ice and snow set limits on choices.
 
A local bookseller remains open.
Hardy poets stage a costume party:
one dressed as Sexton curses a dog,
another as Hefner in a silk dressing gown
looks amused. Someone brings absinthe.
Black ice appears on the road.
 
A pause before tourists arrive,
designer ski togs and gold jewelry,
antsy to hit the slopes.
Locals pack a lunch, retreat to the lake
and count the bald eagles nesting.