Lines

by Nancy Scott McBride

vixen in the clearing-
her turf
where the strip-mall’s going up

Lines

by Theresa A. Cancro

low sunset –
a red fox skims
the grass

A Home for World's Clouds

by Narendra Kumar Arya

Last month I travelled a place
Said home to world's clouds
Floating there in measures unknown
In forms and feature so versatile
As if they had their proper names.

Sometimes they appeared from the next turn of road
And like a sweet stranger asked to share the space
We were three people in the car,
Many a times they walked like neighbors
And after long walk said, " dear let us return,
It seems heavy rains
Want our company;
But oh! we have forgotten to bring parasols."

It was cold and it started raining
And when the trees started shivering
Clouds brought their thick blankets closer
Wrapping the trees as if children innocent
Drenched in waters from heavens
Lest they fall ill
Tomorrow they might have to attend schools.

Sometimes they ascended like airplanes
From green grassy valleys
As if they have to travel to other lands
Where people might be waiting to see
Relatives from distant lands
Full of tears.

In the place called clouds' abode I knew
Clouds are moving mind of Nature.
Sometimes these lovely creatures retained ugly memories
Inflicted by invisible wounds
When they cried to say goodbye
I felt it was not tears
It was gasoline on my face
Mucked with Middle East's airs.

Who Killed the Honeybees?

by Ingrid Bruck

grass no longer hums
flowers don’t buzz
and you stop looking down
when you walk barefoot in clover

the sting of silence

each third mouthful of food
depends on bees for pollination,
they sustain the food chain
and are dying

the sting of silence

when bees starve for lack of flowers
or get lost going home and vanish,
when thirty countries ban American food
and GMOs enter our DNA

the sting of silence

when bees rain down in a parking lot at Walmart,
red wing blackbirds fall from the sky on highways,
and a million fish die in the Arkansas River,
when captive dolphins and whales turn killers

the sting of silence

half the world’s animals have perished since the 70s,
six gulls in a flock, instead of wheeling hundreds,
when only one Monarch visits your garden in a  year
and few bats rake insects on the currents of night

the sting of silence

oceans turn to deserts, fishermen left jobless,
acid rain drains life out of lakes and rivers.
only a quarter of the frogs are left
to croak a night song of coming death

kill-offs, die-offs, honeybees vanished

the sting

In May the Santa Fe River is Alive

by Carl Mayfield

In the month of melting snow
the burgeoning river gathers itself
west of Baldy, flowing past fir
and spruce to ponderosa pines,
to gambel oaks, locust trees with thorns
to die for, the sound of moving water
muted once it reaches town, a steady
downslope all the way to Cochiti Pueblo
where no one even listens any more
to the dry stories of what was left behind.

In the Garden in May

by g emil reutter

It is a dreary day in May as rain has fallen for days but today

is a day to visit the garden under cloudy skies that do not drip.

Squirrels scamper up the face of the dogwood that drops pink

blossoms onto the damp lawn. Around the old stump of mimosa

peonies sprout from the soil. Stalks of Tiger Lilies, Day Lilies fill

the bed as velvet blue flowers of Irises bend and bow. Neat pinks

and reds of Azalea are joined by dazzling purple of Rhododendron.

Thick leaves of Black Eyed Susan lift off mulch, grand basal leaves

of Hosta unfold and within prepare the racemes of white and violet.

Full blossoms of red peak out through thick leaves of Camellia as

roses bloom along the fence line where just below blue bells sway

silently in breeze. . Just past the green of Forsythia in pots along

the steps, Snap Dragons, Geraniums bloom in reds, pinks, whites

and yellows.  Within the colors of this beautiful display those rascally

squirrels dig in soil for bulbs of tulips and hyacinth, robins pull worms

from the soaked lawn never noticing the hawk gliding, hunting from

above.

Misty Morning

by Ed Hack

It's all quite still in mist--the distant pines,
full-grown and dark, the bare, thin dying tree,
the purplish winter brush en masse, a line
behind the still-wet grass. The day's decree
is gray, again, light shrouded in a veil
spring trees glow through, banked fires that seem to purr
through misted air. White dogwoods float as pale
as ghosts; around them nothing wants to stir.
This silence is as deep as Time, a gap
between that doesn't need a single thing.
This is a land for which there is no map,
and what it gives is only what you bring.
Two pair of geese fly low, fly side-by-side,
honk twice, are gone. Their echoes quickly die.

Gestalt: Landlocked

by Karla Linn Merrifield

Sagemothsavor
batsilence
owllight
coyotenight

If I am not among
the all-consumed,
I will become
a rogue ocean wave.

Lines

by Denny E. Marshall

lands body and hands
wrapped tightly with barbed wire
of roads and bridges

Untitled

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

brick after brick
sown in harkened earth
by anonymous monks
this stairwell of silent prayers
ascends straight up
the puckered mountainside

where unutterable genius
envelopes the highest peak
in palpable mist
a gold leaved temple
beholds the green valley far below
bluer than the simple ability
to accept love
without the paraplegic futility
of desire

Double Helix

by Mark Danowsky

two red tails lock
in spiral descent
after a crow chase
fall with the sun
glinting off feather

A Lizard

by Taylor Graham

Under chickweed, foxtail, thistle bursting
green between rocks where I cut a path, trying
to clear defensible-space around my house
against wildfire – a glimpse of silver
wrinkles fast away from the spin of my weed-
eater, a flash of darting dark that disappears
into uncut grass, safety; invisible now.
I’ll leave a wide wild swath in my mowing,
to remind how uncertain and ragged
is the world we share, alligator lizard and I,
between fire and the clearing line.

The Avian and the Cetacean for Beau Cutts

by Karla Linn Merrifield

He is the wandering albatross flying
every thermal of my great heart
in ceaseless flight, effortlessly driving

on great wingèd beats this steady rhythm
I pulse with him, his humpback;
he is the bird; I am the whale.

We are pelagic creatures of synchronicity,
at one with the sea and the sky.
It is a scientific fact; it is a myth.

Sand Harbor, Nevada

by Stefanie Bennett

When nobody’s shore-
Watching
The unspoken
Stones
Wing it
And sing...

Summer Fun

by Jimmy Pappas

The neighborhood
children scurry

down the sidewalk
to see tiny crabs

emptied from
a toy pail

clatter around
searching for the ocean.

Lines

by Joyce Lorenson

summer sea splash
puffins preen
at Eastern Egg Rock

Seascape

by Ed Higgins

Eased by this rising moon,
the tide’s darkening stain surges
onto wet waiting sand. Thrust inward
toward the yielding reluctant shore.

Tentative, at first, this receding/inflowing
discourse of wave, sand, and cleft-split rock.

The ambiguous edge barely perceptible
now against the sea’s widening urge.

The surf out there like a quickened pulse
to the heart.

Origins

by Stefanie Bennett

Mohave Shadow-Land’s
Kinship depth
Is nothing less
Than
       A full
       Moon
In the rose
Window –.

Reality Check at Sea

by Karla Linn Merrifield

To learn
wild stories,
their old calculus?
The gyre teaches ancient cold truths.
Listen.