Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

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Friday dawn.
Thick, mist-laden fog.
Clinging. Gliding syrupy
slow over the city
on silent gray feet.
Sunlight.
Stretching its arms and legs.
Rising slowly.
Gathering its golden
potential ni the east.
Bidding night's deep shadows
to rest and sleep.
Brown, cottontail rabbits
nibble a meal of
dew-laden grass.
Robin, sparrow, and finch
trill morning song.
Colorfully unformed sentinels.
standing their post atop
a row of gnarled fence posts.
Hungry, seeking food, yet
singing at their labor.
Cricket symphony.
Ancient etude and aria.
Pure song, flowing
from crescendo to diminuendo.
The sonority of night-song
fading into reminiscence
in the gathering light.
Brief echo and encore. Fini.

July 3/The Dawn
Free Verse

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65 year old grandfather working with developmentally disabled men. Writing again after many years. Writing and reading poetry lead to serenity.

Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

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His life was once an arbor filled
with ripe and juice-filled grapes.
Rich nectar there for taking he
sought dubious escapes.
Instead of living thoughtfully
he hid and shut the drapes.

The ripe fruits soon fell to the ground
becoming earthen rust.
He lived to spend his hours adrift
on tonics born of lust.
Perhaps to fathom deeper realms,
but his mind turned to dust.

He plumbed the depths until a certain
madness seized his brain.
Frail, unconnected synapses
are all that now remain.
The substances that took him on
his quest to glean and learn,
all claimed a piece of his keen mind
and grant no safe return.

He spends his days in sunlit rooms
the curtains opened wide.
A plush and cushioned high back chair
good people did provide.
From there he greets each morning and
the arbor in the yard.
Grapes grow there filled with juice again,
he pays them no regard.

Lather
Common Verse

**After the song "Lather," by Jefferson Airplane.

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65 year old grandfather working with developmentally disabled men. Writing again after many years. Writing and reading poetry lead to serenity.

Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

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First rain of spring.
Cold.
Driven on a
harsh northern wind.
Welcome, though.
Filling the dry, gaping cracks
in annealed soil.
Restoring earth from an
unyielding, austere winter.

Essential, though coming as
a bold remnant of winter's
glacial will.
Awakening the raw,
callous earth.
Refreshing the dormant
winter air.
Mollifying the soils
for blade and seed.

Frigid and stinging,
yet still a harbinger.
Verdant spring's first birthing breath.
Warmth will come.
Skies will clear.
Today, wind driven rains signed
a new lease on life
for the broad, northern plains.


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65 year old working with developmentally challenged men. I started writing again, about two years ago after many years. Writing brings serenity. I live in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

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Night cries for having lost the moon.
Twilight sobs at the failing of the sky.
Dusk moans at having misplaced the stars.
Heavy tears.
Water tears,
from spawning, pewter gray clouds.
Night lost the moon, sky, and stars.
Abundant tears.
Fertile tears.
The soils swim with her grief.
Plush tears.
Falling tears.
Entreaties to the endless abyss.
Prayers to a God unseen.
Wind driven tears.
Supplication tears.
Bring back the moon, the sky, and stars
that we may cease this crying.
Healing tears.
Absolution tears.
Night sighs. Weighted clouds dissipate.
Wistful prayers are answered.
The night sees her nest in the heavens
unfolding and shining once again.
Her last tears have found
the moon, the stars, and the sky.


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65 year old working with developmentally challenged men. Living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Writing again for nearly two years.

Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

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He remembered the Ohio of his youth.
Winters of pure, glistening snow. His parents
taking him on wagon rides over the deep,
winding trails of naked woodlands.
Swooping great horned owl, fog-breathed
whitetail deer, and string-like clouds flirting
with a cool, pearlescent cup of moon.

At trail's end, wagons emptying.
Families standing and sitting around a
great, crackling bonfire. Smoke-laden
breath from burning hickory, maple, and ash
stinging his eyes and lungs. Aromatic.
People singing. Warm cider and cinnamon.
Cookies and treats.
The plush fragrance of steaming coffee
that he was still too young to share.
It was all splendid adventure. Afterward,
falling into a dreamless, hibernal sleep
before getting halfway home.

Later in winter. People drawing the
blood of the maple trees into buckets.
He had seen it drip from miniscule
tap-wounds in the bark. As the tree was
alive, he pondered if this hurt?
Workers hauling the sap-laden buckets
toward slat sided shacks hidden deep
within the forest.
The maple's lifeblood being rendered
into the most savory syrup
and maple sugar candy.
Sweet treats and a delicacy
for pancakes and waffles.
Ambrosia, his mother and father called it.

Life was all sweetness and smoke.
Crisp, clear, untried.
His mother and father were so right.


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A 65 year old working with developmentally disabled men. Became interested in writing again after the passing of my mother and father in successive years.