Hope’s Spring

by Karla Linn Merrifield

There are no toxins;
no further notes of drought,
of famine, nor of tectonic 
fractures in Hawai’i, 
earthquakes in Oklahoma, Arkansas.
No sinkholes of any metaphoric ilk.              
Only the expectant pair
of northern rough-winged swallows
feeding in lazy spirals, snipping up 
dizzy-darting flying insect prey,
and now perched on a fence railing,
sable mating plumage in morning sun.

Pelagic

by Karla Linn Merrifield

the tide does not go out
rather it falls
coral reef appears
another
another
secreted shoals
exposed
as turquoise retreats
to horizon-deep blue
shearwaters
flying the ebb

Three Photographs Karla Linn Merrifield

From out of the Fog

Glubokaya Bay, Kamchatka Peninsula

On the Beach

Kamen Ariy Island, Bering Sea

Remains of War

Attu Island, the Aleutians

Pelicans

by Karla Linn Merrifield

Eight white pelicans
                        __   __   __
__     __     __     __           __

a code of beauty
we cannot crack
until the last bird dies

two more
__     __

one more
                __

Pelagic

by Karla Linn Merrifield

Do not say
the tide goes out
rather it falls
coral reef appears
another
another
secreted shoals
exposed
as turquoise retreats
to horizon-deep blue
I follow
shearwaters
flying the ebb

Nevada Mind

by Karla Linn Merrifield

I flick sere judgment on horned lizard tongue
wildness uncoils across great white basins.

I rattle a snake’s great desert tail
in the great ranges of sagebrush lines.

I, reptile, speak, coil the wild greatly.

Florid Taos Haibun

by Karla Linn Merrifield

The hollyhocks are exuberant in their heliotropism
in Taos this June morning. Face on, eyeing in sun-warmed return,
the flagrant Bent St. botanicals— those papery blushing hussies,
those native Alcea setosa species in a chorus line of desire—
before my June yes; Mio sol turns morning a flower warmer.

Thunderclouds promise storm;
shadow disappears— I bloom
desert in pink.

Southwest Pointillism

by Karla Linn Merrifield

This is the thorny issue. Pointed.
Everything is not a question, rude, cactus-pointy.
Destiny appears to keep our appointment
in New Mexico on U.S. Rt. 412 East at the Point
of Rocks’ turn-off, NMDOT sign pointing
north. This is the proper junction, pointless
to ignore at the noon-hour appointed
to sandstone, juniper, sage, pointedly
painted to reveal landscape’s point
of view, imprint of spirit, fossilized pinpoint

of relief.

Lapland Gestalt

by Karla Linn Merrifield

Overhead rowan-golden foliage
eye-level evergreen-fir river reflection
underfoot silvering reindeer lichen
blushing leaves—bunchberry

If I cross the border
through a tumble of granite boulders,
I will become the imaginary line.

Native Climate

by Karla Linn Merrifield

On Dominica rain proves
rainforest abundance.
Giant tree ferns bow with weight
of sheets of rainfall.
Fringe of moss gathers rain droplets to one by one
drop into rain rivulets running
leaf litter routes to rain-full streams
streaming into gullies through volcanic
valleys gorging on rain flowing
into the island’s rivers of rain,
one rain-swollen river for year’s each day.

Rain for farm fields. Rain for ships’ holds.
Rain.  Raining.  Rainbow. Rain again.

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.

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.

Reality Check at Sea

by Karla Linn Merrifield

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

Acer rubrum for Valentine’s Day

by Karla Linn Merrifield
                     
Swamp maples begin leafing
in February in Central Florida.
Spring is stingy with their crimson
sequins or sparing of sightseers’ eyes.
I catch too few, so squint
into water below doubling the color
upon reflection.
 
A tree’s sap seems to be flowering
blood across the pond’s still surface.
A single maple in a singular swamp
is just now— now—coming into bud.
I am somehow younger, rubied
in the light, blushing in the shadows:
a girl again, rouged with youth.

Visual Aid

by Karla Linn Merrifield

Complexity is underrated,
the trees teach us.

Swamp Psalm of the Water Sprite

by Karla Linn Merrifield

The Fakahatchee is my shepherdess;
I shall not want for canopied swamps.
She maketh me to submerge below profligate
fronds and tendrils.
She leadeth me into still waters.
She restoreth my arid hope.
She leadeth me along slow flowing
strands of wildness for her faith sake.
Yea, though I wade through the valley
in the shadows of fishing spiders
beside alligator ponds, I fear not greed,
for thou, green queen, art with me, in me.
Thy sword ferns and ghost orchids
do comfort me.
Thou preparest a cypress stand before me
in the cool space of my heart.
Thou annointest my soul with dew.
My dream runneth over in liquid light.
Surely chlorophyll and oxygen
shall follow me all the breaths of my life
and I shall dwell in thy habitat
of epiphyte, lichen and moss—forever.

U.S. 50

by Karla Linn Merrifield

A smooth satin road unspools
across the corrugated torso
of Nevada in summer morning,
light rising in a state of cloudlessness.

It unfurls through sage-dusted basin
and over juniper-draped range;
its length unwinds and unwinds.
Onto eight soft-shouldered summits,

into alkali flats of as many
high desert valleys, the macadam
takes on a golden patina as it rolls
above the gold of stone-studded foothills.

The ribbon twists into vast landscapes, finding:
the turquoise ore in me, the copper lode in you.

At Reserva Caleta on the Osa Peninsula

by Karla Linn Merrifield

This Costa Rican garden far more
abundant than any mythical Eden,
bolder, redder, in deeper
golden yellow, a bluer blue,

a pair rustle upper limbs
in the flash and flame of feathers
of macaw copulation—in a blur
they mate in saturated living colors.

Nocturne Incomplis

by Karla Linn Merrifield
         
Frogs stop rain starts
as wind stirs midnight
with hiss drip rattle creak
full-moon gutter-gushing
puddle-making vernal storm
delivers cool June
on a Canadian front
lately of Toronto.

Wind moves waves
toward the end that is not.