Walking Stick

by Bob Petras

This thing called walking stick
drawn by four-year-old God
shimmies on a blade of grass
phasmid of all limbs
on Ohio island shore.

Late Summer Song

by Lori Gravley

Underneath the electric hum and traffic noise
a smaller sound. You have to strain
to hear it, the way you must
squint to see the shadow
of a water strider traveling across the river
or the antenna of crayfish waving into current.
Say it’s a whir, but whir is fan, cool air
and the air here stifles.  A buzz, maybe?
Struggle to find the word that calls sound
to your ear. Not the sound of cicadas
dropping heavy through leaves
but the soft sound that laps
at your feet in small waves:
cricket, woods, late summer.

Lines

by James Babbs

summer day
crows fight over spilled popcorn
convenient store parking lot

Lines

by Nancy Scott McBride

brush fire on the mountain
sunset lasts until dawn-
hot dry autumn

Foot Prints

Stefanie Bennett

Bringing the outside in;
The crimson
Rosella.

Summit

by Chris Butler

Toes over the summit
of mount never rest,
the unadvised advise
to plummet.

Labor Day

by Al Ortolani

At summer’s

end, the humming-

bird appears

like an after-

thought, a (  )

between worlds,

a bit of earth

and spirit combined,

small bird

bound by gravity,

hollow bone and

feather, as much

weightless as

hope itself. Wings,

transparent in

flight, race

a scuff heavier

than sunlight.

Carousing

by M.J. Iuppa

Around & around, throaty
trills & secret pleasures, finding
an entrance to a mulberry’s
cache of berries, boasting
its bottomless lure that
most goldfinches
can’t resist.

Lines

by Terrence Sykes

goldfinch sings softly
amongst leaning sunflowers
harvest ecru seeds

On Myrtle Beach

by Robert Gillette

ocean breeze
can't overwhelm
the smell of coconut oil

Lines

by Marilyn Ward

sheltered from the wind
in granite fissures
coltsfoot

Parched Fields

by Suzanne Cottrell

Stunted, spindly corn stocks
Of the Berry's Farm
On Old Whitewater Road
Browned, brittle husks
Underdeveloped kernels
Lost crop except for silage

Bad-Ass

by E. Margareta Griffith

Yeah, okay, I'm in an air-conditioned box,
hurtling down a smooth road,
with hundreds of my kind,
toward a paved hole in the hills.

Red stones touch blue sky,
reaching from sunrise-gray rocks molded by wind and dynamite,
by no means an eternal flame, but close enough to fool my ephemeral kind.

The minerals will be there when our children are no longer our species.
The wind will tend the landscape when the highway is nothing more than travel-crumbs.
Water will smooth and crack the rocks without us to guide rivers or acidify rain.

Stones treat us gently, despite our violent adjustments,
to them we're mere newborns.
their bad-ass old age shows us up to be frail amateurs.

Our tantrums may spell the end of our toddlerhood,
or not.
The benevolent stones are unworried.

Badlands

by Eric Lohman

Pinnacle
Butte
Spire

Ochre
Coal
Fire

Silt
Clay
Stone

Whisper their witness

Dryness acrostic middle

by Clinton Siegle

I am the dry years turned to beauty
dried plants turned ashes of grass and trees to desert beauty
rain not forthcoming waterlessness area's deserted beauty
yearly no rains creating the areas to beauty
non open clouds draining plant's beauty
ever forever a parched beauty
season of a dryness beauty
season of whether desert beauty.
Never changing beauty.

Blue Heron

by Steven K. Smith

A great blue heron is more gray than blue.
As it stands shadowed by trees lining the bank
hunting frogs and minnows while
balanced on one leg, crouched, waiting,
anyone can see that blue is wrong.

Unless you see one in full sunlight
near noon, when the sun's vertical rays
pierce the gap in the tree canopy at full power,
and it takes off in your face as you
leave the forest near the stream's bank.

Then it's a deep shade of blue, somewhere
between cobalt and steel,
as wings climb air's stairway
up from the water's spruce
to the sky's chicory.

Nature Spills into Vandals

by Clifford Brooks

One chameleon takes tentative steps
from a potted plant.  Hummingbirds glint
like blades.

Opossums adore trash. Last night they
squalled and hissed over apple cores.  A bear arrived.
The bandits avoided each other.

In the early hours,
mountains pour out bearded vandals.  Before work begins,
they regroup and vanish.