Lines

by Christina Chin

whirling 
drift wood red with silt
plum rain season

Scavenge

by Anita Sullivan

The Anna's hummingbird sitting on the willow twig
makes a private, smug little sound
like gargling zippers. She is taking a break
from her hourly scan of the few remaining
Salvia microphyla blossoms, the October
holdouts. The usual summer spats are
largely gone, the birds finally able to honor
the social distancing their protocol demands,
but high energies cannot tolerate.

Poke! Poke! goes the black-scimitar beak
in what must be a version of scraping
the pudding from the bottom of the bowl.

Minnows in a Tide Pool

by Howie Good

 
They’re what happens
when flickers of flame
can survive in water

Lines

by Veronika Zora Novak

crouching feral cat
the swaying glow 
of pampas grass 

September Night, Garden Valley, Idaho

by Yash Seyedbagheri

 
Up Sunrise Drive,
Ponderosa pines line the road
black shadows
a nearly full moon is in the sky
pine needles sprinkled across the road
crickets and frogs call
air is crisp

Lines

by  Rp verlaine

lightning storm
wearing black better
than night

japanese inn

by I.W.B.S. Sister Lou Ella Hickman

wind
   blowing seaward

the door opens
   i stand
watching the wind

tomorrow
   my son will die
the door closes
my bath is ready

Up in the Hills

by Ray Greenblatt

they are listening,
in the growing season
the speckled light
is part of their covering . . .

in winter woods
they can see distances,
mist from their breathing
cloaks them . . .

their history has been a long one
hart, roe, hind . . 

Breathing

by Rachel Lee

Saturday evening, orange-gold light slants
through the palm grove, glazes across the clearing.
Here, the rose-ringed parakeets fly as if breathing—
in circles, they rise, fall, rise again. The air thrums
with their shrieks.

Ancient history

by Shannon Cuthbert
 
Birthed in a time of drought and flame,
a cacophony of gypsy moths with mouths like our own.
Later we’ll find it hard to describe their buttermilk stench,
their sponge wings spouting ink.
So young, language claws loose.
We run through the slash of branches on skin.
Caterpillars moist emerge from our lips.
A simple trick: the apple applied to the swelling bruise
becomes the poison you most crave. 

Conservation of Angular Momentum

by Virginia Aronson

Consider the turning of the sun
and staring up
waiting for fever, questioning
blinding reflections
as a double
consciousness.

Consider loose deer bobbing
through thick pine, white 
tails flashing
in the moonlight
knowing, brilliant
wisdom you can't acquire
online, in video chats.

Between the next star
and here, or here
between the sun-dried skulls
of the wild animals among us
there is just one burning
question:
how does it feel to be
the problem?

Consider the naked empire
built on an enriched soil
of darkness and lies
the carriers
vulnerable to the invisible:
pass down the bucket.

Consider this too: what if
the world is stunned
into silence.

The fig and the wasp

by Stephen Lang

Desperate, she burrows into soft flesh-
Shedding her subtle, ethereal wings
That sped her on this single flight-
The clandestine bloom obliging,
Towards the pulpy pouch, wherein
She’ll disgorge her treasured eggs and die.
Her brood will mate and fly the fig,
The females on their final flight,
Pregnant and, unknowing, tagged
With sticky, figgy sex-dust,
To proliferate perpetual fruit
That feeds the needful forest from
The generous parasite, keystone strangler,
Hollow-latticed, steep cathedral,
From which Hathor herself evolves,
To welcome home each weary soul. 

Endangered Frisco Clover

by Lynne Goldsmith

You’re hanging on with taproot intact,
reddish-purple blooms, shallow ground
among pinion, juniper, sagebrush
spread out, gravel making room
for “invasive” plants to settle
with joining the heavy dust
to pare down seedbanks,
pollination viability,
in these your few areas                                   
of Utah wilderness for growth,
your only home
among miners eroding the earth,
removing the soils,
digging for gold.

The water drops

by Dmitry Blizniuk

 
The brief rain is over, but it has glazed the world,
and a crow fools around trying to catch
water drops falling from the roof,
like fish falling from the sky.
He is so happy;
he jumps away,
puffs his chest, ruffles his feathers emotionally,
then attacks the drops again.
And the drops have already pecked
holes in the dirt
in the shape of a future flute.

(translated from the original Russian by Sergey Gerasimov)

Drought

by Pamela Nocerino
 
Riverside dirt 
was the bed
in more generous weather.
Now, smooth gravel and unnatural debris
tuck the edges of barely-there banks
and cracked, ash-dusted surfaces
make haunting patterns
of parched 
parched
need.

Full Moon, With Stars

by GTimothy Gordon
 
The full moon rises, pauses,
takes its place among all              
midsummer stars not known
for color, shape, size,
overwrought pride,
full moon, with stars,
the kind of night thing,
above all, we wish ever
with us, in a dark time,
never not be new.

Shingles

by Arriama Matlock-Abdullah 

Shag wood hickory
Bark jetting away from the tree trunk
Suspended in mid air  

Alive

by Darrell Petska

gray squirrel

measured steps forward
hold
side flip left
hold
side flip right
millisecond hold
dart toward fence post
wheel/dart back
hold
hold
right roll twice

red cardinal alights
left glance
right glance

gone

Awakening

by Shayan Kothari (high school writer)

Splayed wings of a kingfisher 
make seldom appearance 
above city embers.
The sky slumbers, finally.
Flapping softens, 
evaporation into holograms, 
cotton-woven cumulus
dissolving into night's 
marmalade.
Spangled skies illuminated alas.
From a distant silo 
whelm the undulating
tears of Western Scheldt. 
Its dace rejoice,
for estuarial squalling
behold the return of
kingfisher.

Brotherhood

by Lynne Goldsmith

No brewer’s blackbird in the lavender

but a brotherhood of cowbirds’ oratorio of feasting

on a stump with seeds and cracked corn

celebration as they raise their backs and heads,

puff out breasts, spread their tails, lift their wings,

and bow 

again     and again     and again.

Harvest

by Elise Woods

Ripping wheat from fields
Deer abundant til winter
Harvest will provide

Haibun

by Darrell Petska

Craggy burr oaks blot a waning moon. In the savanna, cricket songs cease. A screech owl somewhere among the stars has the final say. Weighty silence engulfs space, stills time, swallows a lone firefly’s blink. A foot, a hoof, disturb the woodland brome. They meld into night.   

  eight glinting moons

  snared by the dark branches—

  possum family

Lines

by Pawel Markiewicz

autumnal buckrams
the last roses sobbing of
flowering seasons

White Body of a Woman for Madeline

by Rabbi Steven Lebow
 
Blossom of pure light, 
white body of a woman on a stem. 
without you, the world will not slough off its snow, 
nor the night fill up with dew. 
 
Pools of dark water, 
dark history of the petals of the eyes, 
that fell beneath the hand of winter. 
beneath the cold eye of the moon. 
 
You ask me not to write about your body 
and your modesty increases my desire. 
I sow the myth and reap the metaphor, 
white flower in the dark earth of the soul. 
 
Without you, the world cannot blow the candles out, 
nor the night lay down its head. 
You paralyze the stamen of the heart, 
white flower of the woman in the moon. 

Carrion

by John Grey

The crows perch on the upper branches,
three glossy-coated undertakers
clucking how good they have it.

On the roadway below,
small mammals chance their luck,
are surprised to find they have none.

Squirrel squashed overnight,
the crows drop down for burial rites,
their beaks for pall-bearers,

stomachs for coffins.
Occasional cars interrupt the ceremony.
But these birds are not at risk from traffic.

Their radar sends them skyward
should anything approach.
Then the coast clears, the service recommences.

The crows are no choir. No mistaking them
for summer warblers. Their loud caw celebrates
a reverent feast, a glorious interment.

Grass

by Lydia Chapman

Grass among gravestones
keeping good company
to the forgotten

Just a Trim

by Darrell Petska

Cottonwood
ragged
rustling

billowing squall line
strikes

branches clash:
east-leaning, diseased lateral,
hanging stub, taken

west-facing lateral branch
pared,
weakly ascending scaffold branch
lopped

leafed twig fall
frittering down

brightening
rain patter
leaves

Lines

by Roberta Beach Jacobson

wrapped
in the colors of autumn
the river

The crow

by Katherine Burris

The crow begins its day early

beating the pheasant’s squawk for the harsh welcoming sound of morning.

It surveys its domain.

It knows exactly what field is being harvested

on the fertile marshes preserved by 17th century Acadian dykes in Old Barns.

The garbage stops on the streets of Bible Hill are routine: College, Murdoch, Vimy, Dorset

and the Aberdeen Street School playground offers no secrets to it;

roadkill can’t be planned but human rubbish can.

The seasons’ changing weather has little effect on the crow’s timetable,

but dusk does, signalling flying time

toward a night-time perch high in the towering eastern hemlocks,

for the crow ends its day early.

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

bright green grasshopper
plods along lakeshore
hoisted by an ant

Beach Shores

by Melissa Kelly

Jones beach is empty except for
bluish grey shells along the shore
white foam from rough waves
And the seagull searching
in deserted garage cans
for sandwich scraps

Autumn

by Rob Lowe

There is a slowness in English autumns,
A pause, an appearance, before the Fall;
Balanced withholding from sudden changes,
To slip without drama into the cold

 
Alchemical sleep of the ending year;
I smell the ways they stir on the verges –
Stubble, acorns, brambles blotched with ageing;
Webs of spiders, their coded announcements

Then the revolution: fields bare as bones;
Shock and awe of a blasting December
Consuming supply lines from November.
But that is a violence yet to become

Today is the last of summer memories,
To harking back to dry weeks in July;
Recalling fruit trees heavy with harvest,

Hung under a sky that scarcely darkened

 
August, September, times of preserving,
Their stillness invaded sinew and bone;
And everything seemed so secure then
Before the war came – wind, downpour and storm
 
Till then I exist in an in-between;
The sun inspects its columns of branches;
Footsteps of light leave imprints of shadows,
Where small lives scuttle to sheltered places
 
The rivers no longer complain “I thirst”,
But nor do they burst their banks with surfeit;
This is the moment all is forgiven,
Waiting, remembering - ordered to move?

 
That will not happen, not for a moment:
This season awaits the brown leaves applause;
Only then will it raise up the curtain –
A stage without light, a plot without cause.

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

Belted Kingfisher
perched high above the lake
preens blue-feathered crown

Untitled

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

not natural or ethereal
not composed of elements
from any needy origin story
this particular Bangkok morning
revels
in luminosity
 
with the first rising sun
ritual sacrifice
skyscraper phalanxes
those high priests of profit
who are really deluded prophets
cast beloved death-waking shadows
to confess monstrous alibis
deep listening heals

for the second blinding
white flash
of nirvanic rapture
beyond tenacious reality
the alter-ego mirror
of the collective unconscious
shatters
ornate sprigs of Thai gold
that cheerfully drown in restless pajamas
of heroic separation
from any earthly body
ordeal or recovery

August Evening, Garden Valley, Idaho

by Yash Seyedbagheri

Down Sunrise Drive
sky is pale blue, pink, and tangerine orange
shadows on the road
Ponderosa pines darkened
air cooling
crickets call faintly

Feeling the Burn, or That Which Feels Like a Bargain

by John Dorroh

Fires come in many flavors: Orange Crush
with its fluorescence fogging the bottle
from the inside out, inviting thirsty glass animals
to toss it down their parched gullets, its sugary matrix
of bedroom communities, chemicals that are hard
to pronounce; golden butternut squash with visual
connections to ash leaves on a Colorado mountain side
in mid-September; devil red, complete with obligatory
horns, its sinister smile that confuses all the normal people,
wrapping them in a hot satin cloak, pitchfork optional.

Yours is the Combination #4 with a medium drink
and fries, an upcharge for handmade onions rings
in a beer-batter crust. You know as well as me
that when you mess around with fire, you almost
always get burned.

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

rain-soaked otters
slip down river banks
hunting for brook trout

Lines

by Ankit Anand

Mallard dabblers
Plunge the shallows
For freshwater shrimp

Silence

by Carol Farnsworth

After cricket’s chirps
before the sunrise
   silence

Pride of Place

by Ankit Anand

When the Eagle has had its fill
The Caracara move in
Black vultures bide their time
Turkey vultures keep their distance

Ecology

by Ankit Anand

Eucalyptus
Chirps
Till silence.

Waves

by Carol Farnsworth

ebb and flow
whitecapspushed by wind
erode Sleeping Bear dunes

Lines

by Susan N Aassahde

magpie crayon blimp
host cot
butterfly Gorgon spire

Whitefish Point

by Carol Farnsworth

a spit of land
waves tumble smooth stones
litter the sand

Ripples in a Pond

by Ahrend Torrey

          A subtle chain of countless rings         
          The next unto the farthest brings…
                  —    Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”
      
A pine nut falls into the dark, still pond—
a ripple-wave appears, then another

ripple-wave appears, then another

ripple-wave appears, then another

ripple-wave appears, then another


pine nut falls into the dark, still pond…

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

coachwhip snakes
    mating in the shade
       of the cedar tree

Summer Morning

by Patricia Hope

Dawn
On Watts Bar Lake
Geese honk
Water laps
Chickadees chatter
Swallows dive
Ducks quack
Mayflies amass
Egrets stand
Fog clears.

Lines

by Padmini Krishnan 

dawn drizzle
a Wood Pigeon’s
new tune

Garden Valley, Idaho, Morning

by Yash Seyedbagheri

Over Warm Springs Road,
sun falls
along with graying shadows
dead Ponderosa pine leans
sky light blue

Lines

by Mark Danowsky

two goldfinches alight
on a blush rose bush
across from the Wawa