Poetry of Issue #5                        Page 37
Table of Contents	A Gathering of Ghosts We speak when the fireplace roars dead toppled aspen trees on this mountain smoke billowing caught between the room we sit in and the chimney heavy choking branches burning in the trees of night. Old logs harvested eighty years ago encapsulating my wife's family I am a willing guest and progenitor of ghosts here in this cabin her father, grandfather, uncles and aunts built in the wilderness of the grid oh! these mountains! where the wind blows over their bones between these peaks where elk graze the mountain lions, bears otters in morning brooks so light in the morning, but here we are with the night outside and the these generations! I have a scotch deep in this wilderness where I find peace and speak to my wife as each read out separate books like a cat coiling around our lungs she listens to the little girl of magic she was and will always be among these family members buried on this mountain and answers among the ghost I find myself alone at peace alone in this dowry you wife were bequeathed What do you hear! What do you hear! And what am I ghosting in this space?   Jared Smith __	What We Are Going Through in This Time Whatever disturbs your pure flesh that grew from the pine forests and alpine lakes whatever disturbs your mind as it cares for the animals as it strikes the chords of the eternal cosmos it is true is but a moment in passing life but it wounds you and distorts you from the winds that carry across our place in time and history and because it disturbs your flesh it does your mind as it does all of our minds in this awful time as our minds are born of flesh and spirit we must rise beyond the flesh that weakens us and beyond the mind that can be caged by fear or hate, and we must understand in our flesh the power of words and the arrows and hatred and fear they can bring and Death, that too, and how to use them ourselves as shamans once did or as phoenixes that flew above the fires of Homer and rose from the ashes more powerful more horrible than what had sought their death and so this is what I say to you, what I leave you across every breakfast table in America every home where a husband and wife are looking across time and each of them are looking the same way each of them are looking across every breakfast table as the sun is rising over the tired buildings they inhabit the commercials playing on their radio and TVs and the pages of the small town newspapers they turn as they wait for the coffee to cool just a little more are all saying the same thing but are still missing what each one of them might say before the day begins and must say before the sun goes down on our time, and if they do then each one of them will change the world and oh your pure flesh though scarred will be of all that is holy.   Jared Smith__	The Wild Intangibles There is no art taught in the universities. There is no poetry, now no song but the wind rubbing grains of sand and the sand's percussion against rock and the tear of bits of stone against flesh. These are the music unfettered and untold. There are the mountains, their slow heaving as they churn storm clouds above the valley. The squirrels scratching outside my window where shades are pulled back and sun dances along the frozen spines of forgotten books. Their pages turn and my sorrow reaches out. There is no art taught in the universities. There is no poetry, no song, there are no children among the workers laying roads and factories building bridges from one capitol dome to another there are no times for hyacinths blooming the wolf calling his mate the wild intangibles.   Jared Smith__