Laguna Beach Lit Fest Is Almost Here!

This month’s poem is by Anaheim’s newly named (and inaugural!) poet laureate, my friend and colleague, Grant Hier. For more than a decade he served as Chair of Liberal Arts and Art History and Faculty Senate President at Laguna College of Art + Design where he remains as Full Professor, teaching courses in Creative Writing, Literature, Critical Reasoning, and Senior Capstone. He will be reading with me and other wonderful poets and writers this Saturday at the library, and we’d love to see you there.

Please join me this Saturday, April 14th, for Laguna Beach's first ever official literary festival (please see full itinerary below or on LagunaBeachLitFest.com). Enjoy readings, book signings, panels, craft talks and workshops from some of California's finest poets and writers including Francesca Bell, Noah Blaustein, Elena Karina Byrne, Grant Hier, Eric Morago, Victoria Patterson, Mary Jane White, Tom Zoellner, as well as Laguna Poets and Third Street Writers.

The event is free and open to the public and graciously hosted by the Laguna Beach Public Library. The Poet Laureate program is funded by the lodging establishments and City of Laguna Beach. Hope to see you there, Laguna Beach!

XO Kate

The Difference Between Entropy and Evaporation
By Grant Hier

“A process is spontaneous if it occurs when it is left to itself in a universe…”
— York University, Teaching Chemistry

After the thunder, after the pouring,
after the sun and the warming,
the rain lifts itself back up
through its past.

The log collapses in the hearth,
the ash plume rising
in the place
of the old fire.

The bird in migration returns
through stilled eddies of ghost wing —
a mirrored image
of its younger self.

The pile of dirt dug from the garden
displaces the sky
in the same shape as the hole
in the earth beside.

Ancestors echo themselves
back alive through our gestures,
through scripted codes
unseen within us.

But first the kiss:
Spontaneous.

In the chilled air of morning, one bell
splashes awake, vibrates waves
up and down its shell
in pulses —

a blossom of tones
like colors,
like smoke,
like breath released

into another’s mouth
in a whisper or moan —
a sharing of molecules, of sky
both inside and out.

Continuous change
brings irreversible paths
as heated prayers transform night,
but no bonds broken

here.
Here

as the sun
through the shade
casts the shadow
of the lamp

up the wall
as the day slides down,
our molecules warm
the cooling room