When The Sun Rises

by Doug Draime

I want to hear
the bird’s song, that’s all. The
meadowlark in the dense dark oaks,
or the whippoorwill crooning
to and fro in the sun
of the sycamores. I grow so damn
weary of the human sound,
flashing on with its artificial light
and the rat-tat-tat sound
of the collective Ego,
spinning on its
perpetually bloodied,
nowhere wheels. I want to hear
the blue jay high up
in the maple tree, squawking
a shrill celebration. A thrush singing
to me from the birch tree.

LInes

by Perry Lee Powell

What we kill
In our
                   Treading on the garter snake    
Back yard
What we don't

Overview

by Stefanie Bennett  

Watching the storm cloud
Roll up its sleeves
Above the serialized
Splash
Of an ever
Changing
Cosmos

The Thunderbird
Dives
For cover.

Lines

by Tammy T. Stone

The river carrying
Sounds of self, inviting
Witness.

Lines

by JS Absher

slower and slower
crossing a plowed field
after rain

Lines

by Ed Higgins

frog song
heron pond-stalking
listening

Do not microwave

by Emily Ramser

I didn't read the warning,
in fact, I forgot it was there,
and I microwaved my head.

My brain exploded.
It's still dripping out my nose
and ear canals
three years later.

Lines

by Theresa A. Cancro

small silence --
a night heron ensnared
in fishing wire

Last Supper

by Gary Beck

The migratory chickadee
tries to eat at the feeder,
but territorial sparrows,
tough town birds,
have no sympathy
for the traveling nomad
and drive him away.

Scalopinae scalopus

by Barbara Brooks

Don’t know what killed the mole;
on close inspection I saw no damage
from talons of barred owl or punctures
from cat attack.

But there it was, looking like a stone
with feet;  small, pink with nails.
Pointed nose, short naked tail, no eyes or ears,
just a rock with paddles.

Didn’t want to touch it,
no matter that I pick up dead birds.
Scooped it up on the shovel
and tossed the body into the woods.

Something will eat it.

Journeying Through

by Seth Jani

I am simply amazed by the light
Dissolving in the purple vat of evening.
The heavenly entourage of leaves
And starshine, small pools of water
Gleaming in the spaces of the wood,
So dreamily prepared and assembled.
This deep in the forest a single dab
Of honey can light your life on fire.

The Last Frontier

by Sage Borja

Swimming underwater seems closest
To dancing in the Milky Way
Knowing nothing but the amount of air
I have left in my suit
Staring into unknown charters
Not a single sound
But my breath
No longer am I fearful
I am up here
The blue planet is down there.

Thank You

by Larry Jones

Hummingbird lands on the feeder,
takes the nectar.

Flies over to where I sit.

Eyeball to eyeball he hovers.........

You're welcome.

February Journal: Wednesday, February 6, 2013

by Don Mager

Sky’s flattened cloudless platter slides its
short hour into the chromatic scale
of yellow’s pitches.  Overhead spreads
creamy buttermilk.  Lower west, it
edges toward pineapple.  Then lemon.
Turmeric.  As it slips away, its
eyes too piercing to smile, the half sun
glows.  Against the cold, sky holds still in
its golden Beryl moment.  It cracks
as vapor trails appear and spread.  One
lifts from the airport at the city’s
far other side.  The other streams down.
Their undersides burn.  Rise of crimson
aims straight toward magenta’s steep descent.

empathy of Trees, Malaga After Daniel Minter’s “empathy of Trees"

by Sonja Johanson

living so precariously, so easily
undermined by insistence

of water, geometry of swells,
frequencies which could lift

a saltbox as easily as a boat,
fog that would hide the banks

for days, still you loved that spare
island, the barnacled rocks were

as your heart, fish your children, dark-
skinned oaks your company. Why

should these have been taken from you?

Beachhead

by Tom Sheehan

What is inordinate are the hippopotami of rocks near Hermit Island in Maine, thick-skulled, unblinking, refusing to mourn themselves. With a half-displaced surge out of sand, as if they've lost their breath in that terrible underworld of salt and constant push, their shoulders beam as smooth as agates from the iodized wash, gray pavilions  of armor plate massive in titillating breezes. Some are remote, half-seen, the unknown at reunions holding quiet places, waiting for recognition in a place in the pool, a niche in the sun. Only the sun enters these huge hearts and moves them, only the sun stirs the core where memory has upheaval. But in moonlight, when the cold year winds down and sand leaps to draw lace as intricate as six-point stitching, their broad backsides become mirrors and a handful of earthquake glows at rest.

Lines

by Joanna M. Weston

incoming tide
of black oil
sandpipers

Three Deer in Oquossoc

by Sonja Johanson

East will take me back. I drive
west. I wend between snowbanks,
until the road delivers me
to a sleeping boat launch.

They stand on the frozen ramp;
watch me with coats that are
better than mine. Ice houses
and snowmobiles edge the distance.

I have to turn around, I say
to them, I went the wrong
way. They stamp and chuff.
No, they tell me, this is the way.

Misery Whip

by Sonja Johanson

Used to be, trees were so big
we couldn’t see the jack
opposite side of the cross-cut.

Now I can haft an underbuck
and cut the cants alone.

Fall

by Michael Friedman

Light, the reflection of brass,
winks in the chill
and tumbled scattering
of leaves.
Naked branches
no longer pulled
in long gusts
through unfurled sails
of photosynthesis.
Leaf hands with green backs
and matt silver underbellies
curl yellow
and cup in rigor mortis,
snap at the wrists,
point back to the suppleness of youth
until they skitter
against dry asphalt,
lifeless in the whip
and whim of autumn winds,
while once tender bark
hardens under a scale
of lichen and knots. Dried crystalized sap
fixes in twists and drizzle,
to become dull as scab
in the leaden rough of winter.

Honeysuckles for my sisters

by Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

Scattered perfume    hypnotic scent
breathe white-charmed blossoms
wandering vine, which like you, we grew upon

rusty fence days of step and climb –
as children again, we each pick a curling swan neck
trumpeted petal, pull out stem through broken base

drop of nectar’s kiss tantalizes each of our tongues.
All our tomorrows were far away as constellations
oasis of dreams’ expansion infinite as promise.

If only we could have known of hereafters
of impending doom, of those who would
suck honey from our bodies, dews despair.

Only if we could have seen sickle moon omen
felt evil winds blowing from unknown futures.
We were set up - like the demolition of a house of cards

fall of the last dominoes on a worn out pathway.
We served our time. Those tenacious wedding bells,
pulled ourselves out from under the gauzy veil.

Fading

by Michael H. Brownstein

A thin lisp of fog smokes beyond the trees,
white tracks line the farm. Somewhere
someplace else is lost in the picture, the gray
photograph of winter's thaw, the nearby river
missing what makes it a river, one identifiable bird
an unidentifiable smudge on driftwood, the optimism
of beginnings, a hole in white bark.

Nightingale Place

by Tim Gardiner

no longer alive, Jackdaw Drive
much less pleasant, Robin Crescent
kept at bay from Partridge Way
too much talk on Cygnet Walk
a Sunday roast in Wren Close
passing through Swift Avenue
taking up the Magpie Chase
this is not the Nightingale Place.

Lines

by Patricia Williams

big thunder clap
few raindrops –
much said, little action

Zen Masquerade

by Catfish McDaris

raindrops swallowed by
the Pacific, a snowflake
melts, no one listens

Descent

by Taylor Graham

A Great Horned Owl. Three hoots repeated
at intervals. A school lesson, mantra, a warning –
a message to solve. That owl's no stranger,
a local presence. We live with it like thunder,
or dynamite muffled by hills.
It stooped soundless to take our lamb,
leaving no more evidence than water
siphoned from a pond. A change in pressure,
an absence; algebra of regret. Spirit
of a lost one. A second voice joined the first,
call and response.
Then silence, the long history of night.

Lines

by Sandy Hiortdahl

Some bright June morning,
Mockingbird will call you, too,
beyond the known world.

Winds vs Trees

by Yuan Changming

The sad sigh of nature
keeps bugging each inner tree
Into shapeless shapes

Suspended

by Susan Keiser

Winter has frozen her work now,
secret names shimmering, safe, anguished.
Lulled, we enter it like a rocking cradle,
the white, vaulted room
where frost settles into glass,
where we shrink with the noise of death
drawing itself across the snow.

Our hands are older than our eyes, some say.
Some say our memories are forgiven,
that we’ve come to a place
famed for the absurd,

but this is the part where we light the village farolitos,
like children accustomed to time travel and invisibility,
striking our matches in the dark.

A Willcox Moment

by Davd Chorlton

A slow wind on a cloudy Sunday
passes between the Dollar General
and Circle K, while Barn swallows
skim the asphalt parking lot
and loop over the Plaza Cafe roof.