Lines

by Patricia Furstenberg

goofy ghostly grin-
still life art in orange
under October moon

Lines

by Kimberly Kuchar

Halloween moon
a scarecrow reaches
for trick-or-treaters

Throwback Treat or Treat To the Children Invited to Build a Border Wall at Trump’s White House Halloween Party, 2019

by Joanne Durham

Dear Children,

in the sugar high of fantasy, 
tigers waving speckled stripes,
peacocks in flannel feathers 
your Mom sewed 
late into the night,
in the whirl of bats 
dancing in eerie light,
they gave you a paper brick
to build a wall. 

I’m sorry, they tricked you.
Long gone all shame, 
they called it a game, 
B is for blame, who can make
the wall high, who 
can block out the sky? 
Etch your name, lend the grace
of your loopy S or sideways d
to a tawdry wall of infamy. 

Lungs breathe, hearts beat,
but growing up means
learning almost everything:  
what’s trust, what’s hate - 
it’s tricky enough with even 
the best of guides. Leap 
for the treat of truth. Be wary
of walls, who they trap inside.

Lines

by Katherine Simmons

coyotes run through
October moon shadows
predawn dreams

Eerie Orange of the Wild Photography by Morgen John

 

Homegrown

by Marcie Wessels/Margaret Walker

fried green tomatoes just enough late summer thyme
corner café blue plate special vegetable platter
magnolia scent lingering over coffee
tourists scurry by another sight to see
bourbon street zydeco two-steppin’ around the homeless
hurricane shelter under the bridge
floodgates the held-back storm urge
fat tuesday mask expansion
new year a new suit that’s a prayer
okra and rice soul food music preservation hall
white page without the black note rhythm out of time

Lines

by Chen-ou Liu

early leaf drop ...
from one house to another
couch surfing

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

floating kelp forest
translucent hues of green
glint in eye of storm

A Norfolk Pond

by Ceri Marriott 

Lost pond, ghost pond,
Old pond, new pond.
Slimy fruited stonewort, buried in the dirt
Extant, just dormant,
Lurking, bursting into life,
Stirred into waking, only a century in the making ...
No brain, yet again
More resilient than man.

silent prayers

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

 silent prayers

for betrayed autumns

these remaining New England trees

conceal nothing

 

their projected limbs

climb skies to eat sunlight

only punch air in bitter winds

scheme no species death masks

and utter the soundless Ommmm

that lets go pain

of never again released beauty--

treetops crowned the highest right

between wrong

and we

 

still glowing coals and embers

of dying lives

their all-seeing leaves

are miniature orange robed Buddhist monks

doused in human gasoline

to set themselves on fire

as flaming ghosts

who chant purple crimson supplications

to feed the earth

as they drip down hillsides

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

balanced on old shipwreck
reddish egret
fades into rust

Lines

by Chen-ou Liu

gray-haired exile
the waves ebb and flow
in a conch shell 

Woody Point, Newfoundland Photograph by G. Tod Slone

Glenburnie, Newfoundland Photograph by G. Tod Slone

 

The Ways of Nature

 by Ceri Marriott
 
Shrouded in cloud, the trees stand like silent ghosts,
Guardians of this naked land,
And rain falls heavily, persistently
To the ground, soaking through the earth beneath,
Plants and grass sodden to the core.
 
Elsewhere a mist hovers a few feet above the ground,
A swirling whiteness swathing the early morning
So that trunks seem split in two,
With branches suspended in the air.
A sudden burst of sun diffuses through the mist
In a faint, translucent yellow,
Portent of a finer day to come.
 
In the hazy sun before the world begins to wake,
A deer ventures from the fields into a meadow overgrown and neglected,
Sheltered by the long grass and the dense, entangled bushes
Around the drying pond.

Lines

by Tom Lagasse

Parts of stone walls stand
Men’s effort to tame nature
Another god at work

The Mayhem

by Kathryn Holeton

Mayhem filled children
prancing through a field of corn
with the harvest moon.

Lines

by Ram Chandran

starlit night
the river flows
towards autumn moon

When the Stars Come Out a Billion Miles Away

by Arthur Sadrian
 
It was cool the night I stole away. My naked feet 
    tiptoed over fissured asphalt, buzzing skin pressed 
 
between stolid cracks like how our living room 
    illuminated the slumped hillside. Here, our house is
 
ablaze with mercury windows and humming generators and 
    the time that brother slipped and splashed bright red paint 
 
across the doorstep. Here, the heartbeat is waning, 
    drowned by the gentle rustle of craning pine needles. 
 
I am guided by the hair upon my legs – 
    guided from uneven tarmac to moonlit grasslands to silted shores – 
 
guided until stupored vines outline inky carpets. 
    I feel their breathlessness: stiff like the ripple of daylight hours, 
 
shimmering like the reflection in my pupils,
    whispering as we unite. And now we wait.  
 
I watch as they float to the surface in pinpricks of effervescence 
    that fizzle with the truth of a billion mile journey.
 
I follow as they train their glow upwards, pay recognition 
    to forefathers that spit them into existence 
 
moon, after moon, after moon. 

Lines

by Tom Lagasse

Birds chatter jazzy lines
The stream gurgles a bass line
I hum along

Lines

by Ram Chandran

the songs of rains-
not alone
in this monsoon night

wooden knots

 by Geoffrey Aitken
 
news reports
global change
affects people
 
earlier for children
and adolescents

who we’re warned
may adopt guilt
or tenacity

a reflex response
 
my own memory
does not recall 
how laces were tied
 
only of shoes

Monarchs

by James Kangas

 
Queen Elizabeth (Mountbatten-Windsor) 
ate jam sandwiches at teatime. I need 

to go back to the park where I collected
milkweed seeds and plant them 

for the dwindling numbers of monarchs 
that fly through these parts

so they can have their equivalent of her
jammy snack, her ambrosia, and maybe

come back and turn the sky a brilliant 
orange in the next twenty years.