Lines

by Christina Chin

Morning thrushsong
winter mountain
In the cedar woods

Lines

by Carl Mayfield 

a few starlings--
  murmuration 
   rippling the blue

On Warm Springs Road, Garden Valley, Idaho

by Yash Seyedbagheri

road curves
full of dirt and gravel
along with shadows and midafternoon light
sky is pale blue.
a stump sits among
leaning Ponderosa pines 

Egret Ghost

by Wesley D. Sims
  
Near nightfall
a great egret
flaps in over
a copse of
hardwood trees,
takes up
station beside
dull green reeds,
now slivers
of shadow
on the pewter
colored lake.
Standing still
as a small statue,
as darkness
descends
he becomes
emblazoned
on blackness
of water
like a ghost
of egrets past.

Abandonment

by Rose Menyon Heflin

Regal Sandhill cranes
high-stepping
silently,
slowly,
grubbing their way
across the open field

are migrating,
going somewhere.
Bosque del Apache awaits.

Fjord Tanka

by Sterling Warner
 
Winter vortex taps
frozen oak ferns and grass snakes
leaves snowy shrouds
dusts Olympic Mountain crests
far across the Hood Canal.

Fall Migration

by Maia Persche

Under the purple dogwood leaves
close to the prairie grasses
sinking down.
A thin note, an icicle
falling into snow.
A breeze through dry cattails.

White-throated sparrow,
quiet traveler.
Watching the world with dark eyes
you have the night sky in your feathers.

There’s a star map above us
waiting to grow bright again.
There’s a constellation of landbirds around us
waiting to rise up
from the tangled branches.

Autumn

 by Larissa Peters

The silent float
into a crisp cold.
A simple
touch
could 
disintegrate 
the very 
veins

[            ]

of the 
hundred year 
oak.

Stoic

by Tom Husson

The wood railings are capped 
in the storm, Cardinal’s red feather 
arrows fly from snowy ground 
onto grey branches, milkweed  
stalks scratch the air, hay humps 
coveted by the horses are silhouettes, 
there will be no sun showing today. 
white by snow, color flashes 

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

evening crows gather
at Silver Creek waters
peering at rainbow trout 

Mountain Refrain

by Clint Bowman

Water droplets
         tap smooth granite,

                                  seep
                                  into
                                  moss
                                    then
                                     fall
                                       onto
                                            a
                                        laurel branch
           
                        and feed the Swannanoa River
                 that flows west,
flows west.

Lines

by Susan N Aassahde

auburn combine fleece
noon easel 
pontoon snow ricochet

Sumac

by Carol Farnsworth

red seed pods
stand tall amidst
rosy leaves

Sassafras

by Carol Farnsworth

sassafras
burnt orange in undergrowth
sway in wind

Shell

by Marla Sterling

Aged oyster shell, adrift on the sand
rocked by the shore’s gentle waves;
moved, defiant of station
in life or in death

Drilled body, ports to open air 

When wet, a rainbow of watered silvers and golds
pay obeisance to the single purple patch, legacy earned
from a long-lost connection

Layers extruded over years, long debrided by sand,
again reach the air, now as chipped and fragile ridges
whose losses have joined the fabric
of its destruction, creating the world in which it lies
in this littoral ebb and flow

Lines

by Marilyn Dancing Deer Ward

across the beck
willowherb seeds 
on autumn wind

November Garden

by John Muro
 
Bright enough to serve
As footlights, chrysanthemums
Of nursery pink and milk-
Tooth white appear like
Garden lanterns, florets
Illuminating mulch
And the mottled trunks
Of birch. The tree’s
Lower branches are
Eerily under-lit and
Sway in deciduous
Decadence – yellow-
Gold glistening –
While kerchiefs of bark
Are cast towards a
Dwindling audience
Of distracted crows.

The Promise of a Heron

by Shelly Jones 

We don our masks each morning, step out into crisp 
sunshine, head up the hill, backs hunched, legs 
propelling us back in time to a safer version of ourselves.

We walk, ghost-like, on the empty campus: sheet-less 
mattresses, broken screens, a collage of sticky notes 
in a window spelling out “hi!” - a greeting from a lost 
species picked up by u-haul trucks, parents’ SUVs. 

We press on up the hill, breath no longer jagged, flagging, 
our lungs acclimated to the climb made so often - two, 
three times a day. There is nothing else to do, we think,
but that is not why we come. A shadow passes over us, 

darkening our faces. We look up, stop, point at the grey-blue 
bird - its wingspan prehistoric, its neck u-shaped, reminding 
us to turn around, look down the hill, at all we’ve climbed. 
We wait till we can no longer see the heron, start down the hill, 
passing the pond, its nest tucked in the reeds at the far side. 

We walk home, knowing we will head out again tomorrow. 

Ghost trees

by M. Bennett

The Osage Orange hedgerow 
torn utterly from its foundation. 
Only a few mangled, lemon-curry roots 
lay exposed against darkest soil.

The mile-long sentry against 
wind and erosion dislodged from its 
WPA-appointed post with 
industrial efficiency.   

The dustbowl a 
distant abstraction. 

I still drive the road 
widened into the void.
The striated, serpentine bark 
of the gnarled trees, 
yellowed hedge apples decaying
beneath bowed, unkempt branches,
as clear still, clearer even,
than the emptiness just 
beyond the throw of the headlights.

Enough

by Pepper Trail
 
The mountain is a mountain of stone
The valley is a valley of dust
 
The mantra in my head, making the drive
from Summer Lake to Wagontire, winding around
the hogback buttes on Lake County Road 2-06
before dropping down to the wide salt skirts of Lake Abert,
car juddering on the washboard, forever fleeing its white shadow
of dust, which catches us at every stop, wraps us, chokes us.
 
But on that mountain grow fat leaves of stonecrop,
seeming to wring water from the very stones, and in the dust a flower
called Dusty Maidens, disheveled heads powdery, but beneath,
a modest loveliness.  And in the sky a nighthawk, so high it is invisible,
but its nasal summoning cry ringing that blue and borderless bell, while
from the horizon-filling sagebrush the songs of meadowlarks rise in celebration
of  all that stone and dust provide.  

The Ring-Billed Gull

by Royal Rhodes

A Ring-billed gull
gulping cast-off waste
around a hulking rusty hull
that roamed the gulf's expanse
ate the rubbish in a haste --
a white form floating on the darkened waves
with yellow legs to dance
beside a sea of graves.

They  watch the sea
and salt-marsh estuaries
these breeding birds in symmetry
ignore a plastic owl
where a tidal river marries
with the sea, as one repairs its nest
like any fish or fowl
beyond this sand-dune's crest.

This chiseled beach
is thick with horse-shoe crabs,
and inland, far as it can reach,
is twisted kelp
where watchful, hungry gulls can stab
at food in heaps on barges that they crowned,
while giving unpaid help
to cleanse the cluttered ground.

Lines

by Marilyn Dancing Deer Ward

wild barley
balances 

a drop of rain 

Baileya

by Larkin Pazanova

Mountains rise harsh
Sun bakes the cracked grass
The Baileya still blooms

Lines

by Christina Chin

darkening 
the autumn sunset 
kraa of crows