Last Night's Storm

by Ed Hack

Day dawns with mist and meadow soaked with rain
and sun across a swath of grass as crows
are barking loudly through the air. The train
is rumbling, speeding by, its horn a low,
long, mournful note that ribbons out like smoke.
A rabbit hops into the brush away
from hunger's eyes that circle in the cloak
of distances of sky, weak blue, not gray
that shattered into rain's strange mystery,
exploding air and what the crazed world flings,
hysteria of fire broken free,
the world seen by the flash of angels' wings.
There're diamonds glinting in the grass from last
night's storm, perfected by its lightning blasts.

Crane

by Laughing Waters

This haiku it is very dear to my heart story. My father always wanted a boy but I came to this world and when my sister was born they find out that they can't have no more children so he become very close to me because I was a wild one in the family, tree climbing, bugs, mud rides, risque homeless animals and I was bringing in the house anything I could find.

autumn sky
absorbing
last scream
of the crane

Once late September he took me fishing on the lake and it was early winter, cold nights and short days. Birds was gathering and they was ready to fly South for winter. Cranes love that lake and one of them get hurt, his wing was injured so he couldn't fly so that early morning they took off and he was left behind he was calling for them and they would answer, but far they fly he would scream louder and louder but they keep on going south. And if you ever hear crane screaming you will never forget that I promise you, this sound so desperate it will chill your blood and make your heart skip the beat. I will never forget that scream. 

autumn sky
absorbing
last scream
of the crane

Years later I was visiting Big Easy aka New Orleans me and girl friends was walking late right before sunrise and it was time when finally everyone went to sleep. Trash was everywhere and wind was blowing it around few love couples and it was so quiet and to our surprise we heard scream "Amanda, Amanda please come back to me" it was a man very well dressed and he was standing on the balcony, holding champagne bottle and he was keep on calling her. For some reason I remembered my favorite series Frazier. And main character was Dr. Frazier Crane. He has everything in his life, money, fame but no love. So all this create this haiku. Birds and humans we alike we love and we want to be loved. 

autumn sky
absorbing
last scream
of the crane

As for bird me and my daddy catch him with my daddy's jacket he was doctored and released back to the wilderness in the Spring.  

Rain Comes in the Fourth Year

by Laura Hogan

Drought-flamed leaves wake
in bewilderment under
the unfamiliar caress of
liquid mercy,
a strange drenching of hope.

Sugar maple fingers drip
myrrh, precious dew
persimmons gather courage,
gasping pepper trees and
wasting cottontails revive.

Roots remember
Elijah casting prayer
over the sea long ago;
changed hearts
watered the dust of Carmel.

Every living thing
drinks, colors deepen,
darken with wet blessing.
The collective breath draws damp,
sighs relief.

At last you have turned your face
to us, wreathed in cloud.
Your gentle rain
quiet as the prayer
of our very cells.

And the towhees and larks,
darting acrobats
in air washed
clean
of the dry multitude of regrets,
pierce the sky with
reaching cascades of joy.

Landing A Steelhead

by Lee Seese

Thigh-deep in the Queets in wool and waders on St. Patrick's Day,
I stand below a tailout, the water dark and still as Jacob's dream.
In drizzled dawn, drawled and drawn, the ceiling low,
I am sodden, stiff, half-asleep even after coffee. And yet,
my appetite is keened for the electric instant when the trout’s life
courses through my fingertips. I watch the bobber drift the surface,
walking speed. Fifteen feet below, a roe sack bumps along the bed.

Now it strikes! The jagged current courses down the line.
I give a flick to set the hook. Long before the sixteen pounds of
fight has left the fish, before the photo shot with mossy backdrop
highlights iridescent silver shining from its flank, I feel the spooling out,
the conscience-bothered sense, that it is wrong for only one of us
to end this day at home.

Lines

by Martha Magenta

missing
from May
cuckoo's song

Lines

by Ali Znaidi

desert sun…
even scorpions
chase the mirage

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

dead sycamore tree
   glistening
      in the rain

thanatos

by Lee Seese

in the driest season
anyone around here can remember

embers under fallen cedars
inch up needle-bedded rills

on the cusp of conflagration as
a chiggering itch in all of us

half-despairs half-hopes
to find release

Drought

by Diane Lee Moomey

You could, fed up
with red and blue flashing lights
and sickened by the siren howls
of human misery that never stop, could
slip through any window and follow
the thread back to Narnia.

You could
backtrack your own trail
and know that, had you turned north
in 1981 instead of west, she might
have said “yes” and you might now
be sitting in a different chair.

Or not.
Or you could, reflecting upon lawns
and empty lakes and on the vanishings
of certain birds, either slide into a glass
with ice, or, ranting, take to the streets
and by now, both those roads will lead
to the same place.

It’s been such a long drought. So many
things were never born.

The Summer of Heat

by Michael H. Brownstein

A shallot of cloud
silver gray
braised oyster
lucid.

What happened
to the rain?
The liner notes
of cloud?
The hiding place
for wind and weather?

Nightfall
the moon onion shaped
the darkening sky
silverback and empty.

Untitled

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

through the open temple door
a jade Buddha glints
like an emerald jelly fish
swimming the ocean
of benign munificence

the intrepid rapscallion
peers down
down down
all the way down
to where foolish attachment
lets go
of its chattering monkey self

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

a line in the sand--
       whip snake
  easing under the gate

A Golden Thread

by Julie Ramon

Only the people that live on the outskirts
of town, down long roads littered with
shadows and cows understand when you’re
mid-recipe and need an egg, you can’t leave
to buy one. Instead, you walk through fields
and listen to the sound of drought crunch and notice
the way grasshoppers lead the way. And, neighbors
know the squeak of their gate opening at the end
of the drive. They meet you half way and ask
what you’re making, and you return home
egg in fist, following the step you made before,
the parts through grass. You, the thread
that weaves from one place to another
always headed home to finish what you started.

Dry Spell (Northern Territory: Australia)

by Stefanie Bennett

Waiting on the inevitable...
The purple plain
Recycles its dust
Into the Sky Spirit’s
Blue-firestar starlight –and
The Summertime
Cut-out whirlwind.

There are no crop circles
Here. No stone-washed
Galaxy. Just
Gondwanaland’s nomadic
Electrons gathering
(I warn you!) The oldest
Of Old Souls.

Lines

by Joyce Lorenson

ending drought
rivulets running
between corn rows

The Drought Close to Home

by Marianne Szlyk

So close to the sea, the Scituate reservoir
contracts to shards of clouds and sky.
Smashed on thick mud, these shards
shrink from the tree trunks and stones
rising where water once flowed.
Humid air promises rain but does not
release it.  Blue sky persists
though towering clouds form.
No storms arise,
even rumors of thunder
off the coast.
Afternoon sun
grinds the shards to dust.

Lines

by Joanna M. Weston

dry grass
in the river-bed
summer wind

In the clouds

by Martha Landman

See that woman, lying on her back
chin up, dressed in grey-white fluff.
Long slow strands of mist float upwards
from underneath her,
changes her shape,
arches her back.
Now she’s Freud,
looking in the opposite
direction, stone-faced.
A baby sitting on his forehead
softens his Hitler nose and moustache.
Now his arms drift away from his body.
The silver-blue halo looks out of place.
His laughter, thick and thundery,
drones through the sky.

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.

August Journal: Monday, August 5, 2013

by Donald Mager

Afternoon pants uncontrollably.
Scummed over with mosquito larvae,
its water dish is low.  As okras’
spear-tipped fingers stiffly beckon to
monarchs and chameleons, heat hangs in
harsh layers.  The stream is almost dry.
Sluggish pools, shadowed below tree roots
dangling their thick calves over the bank,
swarm with black darts of frog spawn.  The heat
paw-pads around and around the dirt
radius of its ten foot rusty
chain.  It thirsts for shade and whimpers a
somnolent dirge.  Dirt’s baked adobe
wears thin cracks of fine heirloom china.

We Came Back

by Tammy Stone

A prior world of raucous sounds we
Made, riots of clanging bells but also

Hushed caress.  Where each tenderness
Melted like snow a river gone by, anger

Whipped loud, and everything that could,
Happened.  But it still wasn’t enough, so

Here we are, marking our cold re-entry in
Soundless, everlasting space, coursing

Through the warring bits, all of it a kind
Of alchemy we’re not here to understand.

We’re here to listen, though we don’t.
It can only start from here, the beating

Heart. The rhythm of palpation, how we
Wandered for years to get here.  Times

I rest in that pause, shivering, bone dry,
Waiting for an outstretched hand. This is

How I learned music can be touched. The
Sweet sounds that have made us and the

Ache of memories trailing through Time.
We are ruffled and ravaged. The world as

Sonorous Remembrance, reverberating in a
Thousand ways a feared, desired emptiness.

I try as hard as I can to listen to each note,
Devastating, beautiful, inchoate and true.

Gray Hope

by Tricia Knoll

I fold back our bed sheets this morning
to match the rolls of cloud billows
sliding like pillows into the naked hot sky.

My feet slip to the tuck at the mattress
to test the cool slickness that may be rain
on a horizon of gray hope

this drought might end.

Sangres Morning

by Maury Grimm

Sun, curling up from the Sangres, the red blood of morning

Nature Being Natural

by Patricia Williams
                             
Sky, sallow yellow and ominous –
     a radio voice warns,
     sirens scream,
warm moist draft, cool dry gust –
     no sparrow chirps,
     the dog doesn’t bark,
     no leaves undulate –
          mortuary stillness

The Rain in Spain

by Terrence Sykes
　
The gracious yet unknowing Spanish rains
Carelessly lay across the barren parched landscape of my desolate secular soul
Fragile - fractured - faded clay earthen tiles peel - crack - roll
Bordering on the dusty receded river banks
From & Of a future by gone era - of today - the unknown present - tense unperfected
Liken to the thirsty desperate soil longing to be drenched
The thoughts of latent seeds - the seeds of laden thought
In a precious gift from a band of seemingly approving gods - above - while - below
Fear - Desire to be frantically - helplessly drowning
In my saline sea of tears - torment - despair
A solitary man shipwrecked on an enchanted isle
Yet without sweet water to quench the hungering thirst
Yet liken to a solitaire ecru flower in the arid scorched desert
I desire to bloom - blossom forth with grand - great expectations
Like a strutting peacock with his feathers aplomb
I held a glimmering - brief vision from the afar - but where
Multitude rainbow colored roses in the blinding snow
While scaling the craggy withering heights
of the Pyrenees - d’hiver - in winter
Lingering traces of the last breath (com)mingle and rise
Rise forth - forward - toward
The awaiting patient heavens on high - above
In simple - silent - sacred - sarcastic exaltation
But the brief yet acidic - sweet waters pass for the barren isolated desert island
Uncharted topography - unknown sands of time - my raspy skin
Too dry - faithless - barren - bitter to accept the rare - perhaps divine gift
To quench the thirst of desire - or perhaps even doubt
Migrating clouds disburse - dissipate - traveling without rhyme or reason
Unknown parallel latitude on the horizontal longitude
Aimlessly following the meandering wayward wind
The revealing harsh light of reality prevailingly returns
With it - my lot of misfortune - misery - daily burden
A gift - a curse - predestination - my oath
In the drudgery of my existence - scorched - rutted tracks I drown
The gracious yet unknowing Spanish rains

Kanaka Valley

by Taylor Graham

A kink in the road, kind of a dog-leg
kicking east. A snag whose hanging tip
fell unheard in storm. The folks who
settled here would dive into rivers,
pick up nuggets – gold. Seems they
picked the place parched-dry. No well,
no cabin, no hearth. Corridors of oak
and pine. Clouds, a bit of breeze
to stir the hunger of this land, secrets
weightier than gold in the pan.

A Bite Out of September Trout Lake, Washington

by Tricia Knoll

Last night gorge wind blustered down and shook the barn,
frantic wind to follow up weeks of droughted summer.

Crunchy hard fall pears, some call them winter pears, plunked
down into golden grass. We still hoped wind brought rain.

We got mist. Floaty fog, a sky-lifting mid-morning
curtain opening on foothills but not Mt. Adams. A gauziness

that did not water. The golden lab grabbed a knocked-down
tennis ball-green pear, tossed it as if it might bounce.

She took bites, one, then another and another,
one bite per fruit, the pears I’d hoped to poach.

Those pears with white, oxidizing-brown bites,
gouges the shape of fallen angels.

A Private Ceremony

by Tom Sheehan          

It was underfoot all the time,
under the sprawling pines, clutch
of alders in their secret weeping,
under bank and half scrutinies,
under an oft-remembered scum
of yellow residuals and blatant ash,
under booming barrage of business
and turmoil gone amuck inland,
this river coming back from the dead.

One strike of trout, silver in slashing,
its quick upstream knifing as if bowed
outward from a grand archer, a slight
speckling of oddly hurried hues
gathered loosely on bright scaling,
announced the comeback ceremony.

Twelve years since the other trout,
thick in the middle, hungry, hurried,
slammed into my hook in river’s gut;
twelve years’ surface garbage, underwater
death in the quick and quiet reign,
the dread reach for root and soft gill
too tender and slow to be refused;
twelve years of idle Saturdays,
dawns spent over lusterless bait
and the image of a river buried
in another time. By the golf course,
where the banks curved under grass
overhangs lush as ever, on April
Nineteenth for thirteen years,
I caught my limit less and hour of sun.

The drought came, the dozen years
between the two trout, the gangrenous
river sore all the way to its falls,
winter-tied flies bouncing hitless
and superficially off crested surface,
targetless, taking the low fly-by
for nothing, soft whiplash of flight
whirring into fast silence of dawn.
A river’s dying aches into Earth’s heart,
begins upstream, inland, begins with us
who envy its freedom, its plunge to seas,
its long passage feeding the mother of all,
we, upright and erect, we inheritors
of all we deposit on Earth, at sea.

And so this rite began, underfoot,
below my waders’ light green refraction
in the clearer waters, began the notion
of the comeback, the ritual dues paid
out over the lost years, the way clear
upstream for one lone trout at history,
the spawning germ buried behind his eyes,
a drum beating upon the silver scales,
the whole vast Atlantic pushing him home,
the clockwise spin of Earth driving inland
this new adventurer, this white water
daredevil banging at my boot, moving on.

I celebrated, hurling back into the dream
the capture of my hook, silver champion
of the return, ghost of the missing years
rushing under the soldered and pewtered
wrestling of waters becoming Atlantican,
this voyager on the prowl, this river mouth,
this wide-angled thrasher at work,
this ceremonial fact of coming clean
upriver, a new glistening gone at large
where my boots stumbled where they trod.

I vow now to free all my taking, to loose
any celebrator on this bright passage,
and if I should halt the harbinger
with the crook of my hook, its corruptible
barb buried in his mouth as deeply
as memory allows the undertaking,
I will loose my hand on the hallowed rod,
I will feed the river with itself.

Like Everything In Time

by Ed Hack

Dull day. The light's an afterthought, mere sheen,
not shine, a something left behind, a used-
to-be whose smoke has thinned, what's almost seen
like half-remembered dreams you cannot lose
because they linger in your bones. But just
like that a streak of sun and dullness lifts,
it vanishes like hopes you couldn't trust.
And then, like everything in Time, clouds shift
and light that seems a shadow of itself
returns, a mirror in an empty room
that waits to be fulfilled, an empty shell
upon a beach where mindless ocean booms.
And now, again, the sun, and all it brings--
the glow of things, as if the light was wings.

Bill Hook

by Peter Branson

Bill’s working hazel coppice, cropped
before the sap’s inspired to rise,
a five year cycle, each bald swathe
twin chains, the wood a furlong wide.

Hand grinding fines the whining edge
to razorblade, the ultimate
design, hooked like an eagle tooth
‘n’ claw, part sickle, hatchet, knife.

A slashing tool, one blow’s enough
for most, a kinder cut, the coup
de grace, held back for bolder staves.

No snarling power saw for him;
no goggles, helmet, gloves, gnarled fist
burl-oak, arm sculpted, leather-bound;
in shadow of his jaunty wide-
brimmed hat, face weathered-conker brown.

Shoots bolt, each season adding size,
like contour lines, man-made, contrived.

He bundles poles, above twelve foot
for hurdles, less for thatching pins;
trails brush on boles to shield new sprouts
from deer; relights old fires, that fresh
bread smell, a role for faggots in
his youth, the baker’s famished pyre.

Sasazuka Night, After Rain

by David Eves

Buildings rub shoulders.
Streetlight blots the moon's hue, rusts
gullible puddles

Untitled

by Miriam Sagan

out to the west
something burning
pillar of smoke
on the long plains
how can I remember
before this world
started burning
even
an unscorched
Lama Mountain

Lines

by JS Absher

short night
the pinch-waist wasps
sleeping upside down

Of Sahara

by Andrea Wyatt

Of the bow and the clearing                                                
of the granary and the spear

of Sahara
    in naked beauty more adorned

with bark and resin
with hide and horn
move across the primal rock
the ancient and eroded tableland
of our heart

we are on the rim of the desert                                  
   a barren waste and wild of sand

looking
(not the american vision east to west)
but southerly
from the encircling shore of dunes
to the rim of Sahel
the dry zone

hide and horn, blood and bone of cattle
dug deep into the small scratched fields
of sorghum and millet
of cotton, rice and yams

quickly planted and harvested
in the shrinking seasons
down through the rainforests
of orchids and baboons
down across the savannah
the endless herds of antelopes and zebra
the tectonic plunge
down into our dream selves
a resonance of sound
we cannot hear
pitched high and keen
across the vast lands
of flat plains
caught tight
in the burn of youth

Creation

by Sarah Henry

Human life did not crawl
out of a swamp
It began with Adam and Eve.
Plants and animals watched
the apple cut their teeth.

Man soon lived in harmony
with nature. Zebra prints
decorated the throw
pillows of beauty shops.
Trees grew daggers and
initials on their bark.
Fireplaces burned fake logs.
A man wore cargo shorts
in advance of the flood.

After the Burn

by Taylor Graham

A moonscape – mid-Sierra forest
since the fire. River runs clear again
after winter storms. Familiar switchbacks.
Ash and char. On both sides of the road
stand ponderosa snags like splints
to hold the mountain together. But here,
peavine binds the hillside in vibrant
pink like sunrise after a dark night.
And fireweed – first to come back after
inferno – a whole blooming meadow
of flaming spikes, the lobes
of each corolla open like a blessing.

Lines

JS Absher

dry pond
the cattle are gazing
at the moonlight

Vancouver in April

by Yuan Changming

Don’t even think of
Trying to pretend, but
Just show your most natural
Charm and grace; stand straight
Amidst the greening maple trees
Hold all the blooming cherry flowers
Closer to your heart; face towards
The bluest sky above the pacific
Move a bit more forward
Before the grouse mountain
Shake off the rain drops of last long winter
On your hair, and

Say cheese, you vancouver in april

Coltrane’s Reign

by Catfish McDaris

Fat folks will suffer,
Cedrick yelled on the dock,
we unloaded mail

Sweating animals
in the Brew City post office
Coltrane blasting loud

Quiet men like jazz,
black clouds bursting with thunder
no rain no refrain.

No Place Special

by M.J. Iuppa

The seam between night &
day is a bluish crease

that splits without a sound, with-
out  having the hook of  a sickle

moon to hold onto— we slip out
of life’s fickle temperament &

vanish for one hundred days of
summer— this hush-hush life-

style— you & I, sinking in-
to soil’s soft crumble.

Blight

by Sarah Henry  

A sullen man trims his hedge
unevenly with many false
starts and unhappy endings
He could be doing something
else. He stops pruning and
rakes away the scattered
clippings. A few brown leaves
do not impress him.

The man shrugs and
walks toward his house.
He goes inside,
closes the door, and
more leaves darken.

Wilderness

by AE Reiff

I will tell the wilderness
beneath a bear.

The tail is cedar,
the bones are subway tubes

of glistening bronze.
Come and pierce the nose.

Open its mouth,
lie down upon a row of shields.

Put its tongue on a leash for girls,
that head harpoon you mountaineers,

a well-worn wake of undersides
as deep as hair.

Pigeon

by Chantal Gaudiano

A pigeon with deformed legs
Scuttles across tiled cement
At the train station.
It rests on the
'Mind the Gap' studded white steel border
That warns of the rail line's edge.
Texas summer sun heats bird and metal.
Whistle blows, and metal vibrates.
Train approaches, and pigeon
Flies.

June Journal: Wednesday, June 5, 2013

by Donald Mager

Humping along in tandem sleek black pairs,
six Starlings glean the fresh mown lawn.  They
harvest  ants and seeds.  Dusk-lit grass glows
in jade shadows.  Onyx feathers gleam.
Bobbing beaks flash yellow stabs and pricks
like toy machines.  In a parallel
with the Starlings’ now, with different laws
another now presides.  Ankle-high
moist tang of hay teems with conclaves of
mosquitoes gathering to ply their
trade in thirst and blood.   They too know how
best to stab and prick.  Their now hungers
too. Each shape of now is as supple
as who observes—what stands where—and why.

Lines

by Nancy Scott McBride

finches in the knotweed
hungry hawk watching from
the tall pine tree

Sign

by AE Reiff

There was a sign
when sun emerged
from fingers tips and rain.

A language fell above the breast.
I don’t know if lips were moving
but the hands spoke.

June Journal: Sunday, June 2, 2013

by Donald Mager

Night’s shrinking band of sky sets up shop
between the tree-lined horizon and
the tent-top shelf of clouds.  The oblique
triangle of Venus, Jupiter
and speck-white Mercury drift behind
the northwest mound of trees.  Applause
ends.  The sky’s silence steps forward in
black.  Behind the cloud tarp, the sequin
gown of stars hides.  Binoculars sit
abandoned on the deck table. The
show is over.  The bedroom door slides
and snaps its lock.  Clouds ooze farther down
across the slice of sky and slowly
inundate what’s left of memory.

Krishnochura

by Sayeeda T Ahmad

Krishnochura blossom across Bangladesh in the spring,
rows of Krishnochura trees on crimson fire, crimson petals
scattered throughout the village grounds and fields,
scattered throughout the footpaths and city streets
of Dhaka, Sylhet, Chittagong, Rajshahi,
cover every district town,
melt like crimson droplets in the rain.
They are a yearly reminder
of the blood of its people in 1971
drenching the village grounds and fields,
drenching the footpaths and city streets,
and rows of Krishnochura trees on fire.
Krishnochura petals still burn memories,
still leave crimson bloodstains on the ground.

Global Warming as Evidenced by Coral on the Beach at Heron Island

by P. J. Wren

we walk with
naked soles across
the brittled staghorn

touch of salt water
intake of breath
thin red stream

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

afternoon sun
the lizard
once again