Does the Leaf Still Believe

by Catherine McGuire

in the tree when it’s fallen?
Lying on the grass, first brittle
then slime? Does it recall
its brash emergence,
a rice kernel bud reaching out, slurping
the rain’s nectar, the sun’s manna?
A kin to the others rustling alongside
but never a clone, a copy –
did it glory in that extra green vein,
or the tiny twist of its edge?
And now discarded, pushed off
by new buds, useless except
as mulch, new soil born of the slime.
Regret or content? So much hangs
on what story we’re told.

The Lyre Bird

by Yvonne Vinstra

Where human greed and commerce mix and merge
Trees fall, birds lose, such is the lyre bird.
Alone he sings his own departing dirge.

His forest lost, he must sing out on verge
Of death but still he sings the sounds he’s heard
Where human greed and commerce mix and merge.

If he could only comprehend, his mind would surge
With knowledge that his song is quite absurd.
Alone he sings his own departing dirge.

No more does mimicing lovers sighs purge
Their passion, he sings only chainsaws’ words
Where human greed and commerce mix and merge.
Alone he sings his own departing dirge.

August Campfire

by Jessica McKenna

Who knows which bark
cracks before us now,
castoff limb from
hurricane, or ill-use,
dropped to the floor
among twigs and veined
leaves from yesteryears,
dried, and set to light
by wood from someone
else’s grove. It glows,
and the oaks and maples
make high walls
to keep the shadows in.

"The pheasants, ships of the forest"

by Margarita Serafimova

The pheasants, ships of the forest,
in voices dense, green, bearded,
utter cries, trumpeting
that other life is coming,
we are coming.

Deep Green

by Taylor Graham

They used to haul logs to the mill
across this gorge, landscape of “unfavorable
configuration” for the projects of man.
But Cable Road still twists down-canyon,
into a maze of pine and cedar, big-leaf maple
so dense, we’re descending into dark.
Dirt tracks skitter off the one-lane, disappear.
Somewhere in green, the South Fork
conceals its bear and cougar, its coyote finder-
of-ways.

Pondfeel

by Jessica McKenna

Scent of fish, wriggling
still-wet-alive and how
like a fish, you glide
deep in water-folds,
buried dark where light
streams, and fails, then
up to the sky, as if
water-silk couldn’t
let any life die.

Living Fences

by Suzanne Cottrell                                                                  

Red River Valley natives
Served as prairie borders
Desired, functional, respected
Osage orange trees

Branches bowed, interwoven
Burly, protective thorns
Excessively furrowed bark
Dense, sturdy hardwood
Disease, pest, rot resistant
Lemon-yellow heartwood

Female trees bore softball-sized,
Lime, warty fruit, hedge apples
Grooved, resembling human brains
Fleshy sphere with sticky, milky sap
Multitude of husk-wrapped seeds
Squirrels’ prized snacks

Replaced by barbed wire,
Electric fences
Now obsolete, undesired,
Yard’s nuisance

"Brown feathers are gleaming"

by Margarita Serafimova

Brown feathers are gleaming,
the eagles are coming down over the forest,
purple forest, bare forest.

Standing forest, naked forest
in purple shadow, an autumnal slope.
The eagles are passing.

Off Caldor Road

by Taylor Graham

Forest unravels the old logging spur
since the last load was hauled away.
Here’s hint of a trail to Clear Creek
where someone had a mining claim
and left a frying pan with no handle.
Now it draws wilderness about itself
as creek flows down through gorge
to flatlands as if forever. Yew trees
cling to morning light, their rustle
different but akin to ponderosa
and incense cedar. So many green
voices answering the river.

Lines

by Arthur Mitchell

In blue heron’s eye
the Autumn moon climbs the sky

Taos Skies Susan Keiser

Brown Bear Grazing

by Kersten Christianson

Paws reach for salmon-
berry branch, rough tongue brushes
against spring greens, cane
and bud.  Verb:  to consume, eat
of the earth’s deep good.

Home Woods

byTaylor Graham

Standing off my dog in the swale,
a young pointed buck. Morning too dim
to say how many seasons he’s circled
us in his rounds, and bedded down
under the buckeye’s twisted limbs. Bent
grasses, weight of sleep and waking.
My dog’s on guard-dance with what lives
among us. The buck advances
by inches, drawn magnetic to our north
fence. One sprung haunch-leap over
the wire’s wild side; dawn caught antler-
gold for a moment, gone.

Sparkle of the Mica

by Tricia Knoll

Running the arroyo as the sun rises,
too many perfect stones to pocket
in no-pocket shorts.

Horse hoof prints sprawl under the sun,
and prickly pears hang over the eroded lip.
I dodge boulders and cowpies.

The miracle this morning –
a slab of weathered pinyon
shaped like a fish with a glass eye

swimming the drought arroyo.

Forest Fire

by David Subacchi

The smell of burning pine comes first
Before black smoke columns
Twisting  upwards
Appear on the horizon

And even at a distance
A warmth is felt
Warning of danger
And flushing the cheek.

Summer brings
The picnic people
Discarded smokes
Bored souls

Experimenting
Under cover
Of the timber
Cathedrals

Lighting candles
Before wooden images
Igniting passions
Mistaking trees for gods.

Soon, Blueberry Moon

by Kersten Christianson

Soon
those blue-
berry moon picking
fingers will stain bright
violet hues.  You forage in the light
of the berry moon, drop fruit in a Folgers
can fastened by rope, buffered by the curve
of your body.  Pulled into the dream of a bear
sharing its abundant crop, blue shadows
in wild moonlight, the moon so round you could reach
into the night sky
and pick it.

Little Dry Canyon, Late April

by Tim Staley

3 lean coyotes blend in
to the blond canyon.
Their heads are low
between their shoulders.
No people are here.
A weak little wrinkle
of water and light
wags the floor.

Coloring Book

by Chris Butler

Color outside the lines
with magical markers
to create new hues
of bruised black and blue,

graffiti city property
by spraying paint
onto walls, ceilings
and cracked sidewalks.

Trace your veins
with a razor blade
for a perfect shade
of red.

And scribble every
color together for a
perfect double vision
rainbow.

Prelude

by Trivarna Hariharan

In the branches
      of a blossoming
amaranth—

there is a bird
     chafed by whose
song,

even stones
    begin to move
like rivers.

Lines

by Deborah P Kolodji

fallen cone
from the sugar pine
broken clouds

A Love Poem for the Giant Sequoia

by A.K. Kelly

when she comes at you in full force,
take her beauty in strides.
when you go, leave her as she was.
​in fact, ​leave nothing of yourself.
remember that in between all the wonder, in between
all that you experience when you are with her,
she exists without you.
she lives permanently in a wild and free place.
while you, you only belong temporarily.
the most painful truth for her
is also what she desires most--
to look inside when it's over, and find
no lingering trace of you.​

New Zealand Arjomand Rahimzadeh

Rio Mora Valley, New Mexico

by Jari Thymian

inside
forest service greenhouses
thousands
of two-inch seedlings
hope like wind through mountains

a stump
in the ponderosa forest
the thin
tree ring of my birth year --
invisible from the trail’s peak

deep, deep
scars in her wide trunk
even
in death her branches twist
skyward with strength

Lines

by Deborah P Kolodji

the lake filled
with four thousand stars
stillness

White-bellied Sea Eagle

by Ion Corcos

Broad wings slow,
white breast swoop,
over grassland, dunes,
and rugged beach.
Feet thrust forward,
it dives, nears
the ocean’s surface,
snatches a fish
from the splash;
in its talons, the fish
to a rock ledge;
silver scales,
and red, stripped flesh,
against stone.

Leaving Lake Havasu, Arizona

by Stefanie Bennett

If the sky had a voice
I envisage

We’d buckle under
The bent-over
Exit wounds
Just as
The willow
Does
In bright water...

becoming your job

by C. Z. Heyward

it was time to leave

wings of the sparrow
loping through juniper berries
caress my lids into submission

she's nesting
as I've fed her soft grain
as an afterthought
one pint at a time

zoophilous screams of the quartet
wane on down the boulevard

I jump in a taxi
less I'm seduced back inside

He asks me
Where to my brother

In the moment
it was only cue I needed

I ask him
What brings you here

Bad dreams
his reply
About my children
orphans all them


I ask
civil war

Worse
Poachers

How worse

Their mothers can't fight back
Because elephants can't shoot rifles

Orphans have nightmares
Crying well into the night
Then through the sunrise
And sunset

He tells me

He bedded with them
No more than straw
And a blanket

but the screams of infants
fell like mourning stars
in between the cackles of hyenas
Feasting on the flesh of their mothers

So he left
No longer able to soothe
innocence mutilated

he's trying to remember to forget
but he's like them now
nothing is forgotten

Delicate in this Storm

by Megan Merchant

The rain sheets. Mud lips over blacktop,
washing out our road.

I wake before he stirs, before he warms
an arm around my ribs, adds breath

to this hour in which I am leaning
against in order to forgive.

I crack an egg and in it
a spider,
a sprig of aster,
a split-yolk moon.

I whisk each omen until it yellows—

a bruise where blood
pooled weeks before,
but has hued toward healing.

From my window, an unkindness of ravens
slink between branches.

They hold out for a softening,
or opening of light,

their black feathers show no hint of damp,
no heavy, or glisten.

A Walk in the Park

by Chris Butler

The old
go for a brisk morning
walk in the park
covered in tombstones

in the greatest waste
of real estate space
since causing
golf coursed curses,

to forget their long lost
friendly neighbors or
to remember
where they are buried.

Butcherbird

by Ion Corcos

A lizard
lies impaled
on a snapped twig,
its dead body
slight in the silver
of the bark, the crevice
of the branch
a larder.

Black sap stains
the pale bark.

Butcherbird shifts
low on a tree,
searches
the woodland floor,
ready to pounce.

It does not sing.

Grey legs push
into the air,
wings outstretched

to land soft
on the floor.

Stabs the ground.

Thunder strikes
the nearby hills.

A lizard hangs
splayed in beak.

Watchful,
the butcher sings,
echoes
between trees.

Out(side)

by M.J. Iuppa

Sitting quietly in our canoe, we
cast our thoughts upon the pond’s

mirror caught in consolation
of clouds, searching for

the hole in its puzzle,
the hole in the monument

of another day. We’re
broken by desire

to make life, some-
how worthy of

its consequences.

Sunset Over the Chesapeake

by Ben Rasnic

A golden glow
emanates from white sails
& the breaking waves
against the fading sky.

Burnt orange spawns
atomic rings of fiery
red and vibrant
yellow veiled

in watercolor mists
immersing
into the deep
blue horizon.

Three Photographs Jim Freeman

Blue Ridge North Carolina

Day Lily

Sunset from the St. Simon's pier

Brand New Home

by Dan Fecht

A hermit crab traverses the sands
Of driftwood
On a beach of sea debris.
Crab has a new shell; old root beer soda cap

No Sticker

by Denny E. Marshall

Car earth
Still waiting
For oil change

Forest Light

by Suzanne Cottrell

Hiking Holly Point Trail
Sunlight streams through
Slippery Elm, Black Walnut,
Water Oak, Bitternut Hickory

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

lizard's tongue
    touching the water
                 once

Dance of the Tree

by Gary Beck

Evolution trained the ballerina tree
to dance when the wind
blew music to its leaves.
The arboreal ballet,
as elegant as Swan Lake,
may not have an audience,
but the performance goes on,
as long as there is wind.

Red Rose

by Michael Estabrook

In the back yard a ragged row
of rose bushes stretches
from fence to fence
salmon, yellow, orange, pink, pinker,
white, orange, pink again

In the middle of the pinkest bush
a single wine-red rose reflects the sun
Monet painted
with a final spurt of color
as a bluebird streaks by

Evening

by Eric Fram

In day's dissolve
orange squares
slap with blue
through dull
grains of
graying
dusk.

Northern Lights Over Yellowknife

by Adrian Slonaker

Dazzling, zigzagging zests
of pearly-soft seafoam green, gracing
the homecoming of starlit blue-blackness
after its estival escape,
vibrating through shivery September air
over the delicious undulating dances of
the Great Slave Lake flirting with
defiantly rough noses, teeth and fingers of rock,
the pride of the Canadian Shield,
and more poplars and birches and willows than could be counted
in a score of tortoise's lifetimes.

Three Photographs Grace Hawthorne

Magnolia with matches

Twilight on the lake

Rose

Valles Caldera

by Michelle Holland

The young, Walatowa ranger talks about his discovery,
a gangly tangle of twin elk calves in late spring.
The prairie dogs chirp and scurry, stand and stare
beside their dark tunnels. Under the curve of sky,
the miles of fescue and June grass, blanket flowers,
and marsh irises roll out the landscape that healed the wound
of a monstrous explosion, which left a vast rim of caldera,
inside a bowl of high altitude meadows, aspen copse, and ponderosa,
filled with elk and bear, mountain lions, native coyotes
and floating turkey vultures. A swooping kestrel
catches an unsuspecting frog and flies off,
while the lone mallard in a small pond sends smooth ripples
that push gently against the cat tails near the shore.
His hen must be close by, because the ranger said they mate for life.

Grandchildren in Trees

by Al Ortolani

I try to spot for the youngest climber
as I stand below the thickest fork
where I think if he’s going to fall
he will. The two older ones
have monkeyed on, hurrying
to outdo one another, spiraling up
the main trunk, and then away from it
to the edge of thinness
where they perch like crows. I have
taught them to secure three points of contact
before reaching for the fourth,
to test limbs before trusting them,
but they move with such speed
they barely listen,
climbing with a sense of balance
more innate than learned, taught
not from what I remember in climbing,
but from what they already know.

July heat

by Ed Higgins

Lithe in one another’s arms
beneath tall grey-green eucalyptus

their porcelain smooth trunks
shedding sun-peeled bark,

long cloth-like ribbons drifting
in afternoon July heat.

These fragrant windbreaks
against Santa Ana’s whispered

hot winds, leaves rattling slowly
within the canopy.

In summer-sweet desire
we too once swayed together

the soft deception
of seasons.

International Falls, Minnesota, Winter (a few decades from now, a century)based on the writings of David Auerbach

by Michael H. Brownstein

In the sweet wish of day,
a scone of buttercup and dew,
a lisp of cloud, a wash of sky—

in the heat of the valley,
in the heat of the rock lines,
in the heat of Kabetogama,
in the heat of broken asphalt—

the song of the scarlet macaw,
vibrating toad, blue lipped frog,
and lantern bug. Everywhere
water lily, wild rose, snakes with limbs,
lists and lists of whitewashed bone.

'limitless space'

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

limitless space
through which to pursue
the divine healing mystery
beyond thought
feeling
language and form

the tenderest one
that does not pretend
to own the land
as if it were a child sex slave

Lines

by Stephen Toft

evening chill a field of echoing crows

These are Ruins

by Michelle Holland

Above the year round spring, lush with grass
and cat tails, even in this dry season,
the path flattens onto a small mesa
where the Jemez Mountains, smoky
from another fire, sit to the west.

These are ruins, up here, in perpetual breeze.
Even with abundant water, people disappeared.
What's left is a concrete dam,
a foundation for a house, some stray Indian artifacts,
and in this early summer, the pink roses, irises,
and daisies that were maybe
planted and tended by a pioneer wife.

The Cañada Ancha spreads out far below,
the trail curves through the barrancas to this spring.
Pretend there are no ATV tracks,
no crushed beer cans in random piles.

The night hawks are out this early morning,
and when I turn back to the trail, one flies
speckled face and small dark eyes,
wings out, like a miniature airplane, right at me,
then a whoosh of wind as he flies down into the next ravine.

That Which I Saw Today

by Divya Manikandan

Today I see the heavens have their dalliance with the waves
Provocative, capricious, fervent and everything in between.
I witness the clandestine emotion tucked away
under depths and miles of open interaction.

Today I see the earth break open into two
the rambunctious mantle
rises and shows its flawless ruby demeanour
and as it did, I see the world around me shift.

Today I see a mountain reach its zenith,
the pinnacle of its dispositions, the mastery of the universe.
I see the skies part in embrace to allow the peak to
lay its jurisdiction- one among the clouds and one among the woes.

Today I see the leaves escape their fuscous branches
I see their souls floating away, to greener landscapes and
sunlit domes in distant earths.
I fly away with them, unwearied and emerald, like a
sparkling gemstone- lifted by my own weight of nothingness.