Intimations Waimea Falls, Oahu

by Amy Uyematsu

something about the hush
                            beyond trees
     an afternoon
           drunk with the scent
                                    of hibiscus
        white ginger & orange

silence is this river
                snaking through the old
     canyon walls
                   water rushing
           to answer             hidden
                           bed of stones

& one more offering
                           of clouds
     as wind paints sky     each
                  different stroke     born
            from a thousand
                         nascent breezes

Too Much With Us

by Anita Sullivan

I jump into the hinge of light leaning open
against the Japanese Maple's trunk,

August grass hay-colored and inert upon the yard,
with no agenda,
reflecting nothing.

(This is where laughter resides
its mansion of fireflies).

The setting sun a serpent's tongue across the dessicated grass,
feeling for reflections, strikes
horizontal against the sunflowers in the raised bed, most of them
facing the wrong direction
for their own good reason,

reminds me of yesterday

the photos
on the wall of the eye doctor's room
the black holes in the exact center
of the rayed orange circles – how the eye resembles
(when photographed thus) – a sunflower
how the pupil, dark with seed-threads
inadequately
contracts to avoid blindness, counts on us
to always turn away.

Zion

by Arinda duPont

In March, the perfume of orange blossoms fills the air.
Humming birds fly beside hibiscus flowers sipping nectar.
Spring fades to summer in an instant.
There are no clouds
Just yellow grass, Palo Verde trees and orange sunsets.
In September, the scent of rye clippings and Jasmin blooms is carried by the wind
Up mountains and down valleys.
Geese fly overhead squabbling in a big V,
“Zion, Zion, where art thou?”
In the Arizona winter.

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

western kingbirds
        remembering which tree
     catches the sun first

En Plein Air

by M.J. Iuppa

1.

Overcast and steamy, the gray sky
warps beneath brushstrokes, thick
then fine, illustrating the fitful flight
of a hawk chased by a sparrow beyond
the old sugar maple casting its shadow
over a field of ripe straw— beyond
the fallen barn’s pretext.

2.

Mums the word. Who said that?
Everything in the cemetery is dead.
Someone left a fistful of mums
pressed against a granite marker.

3.

Grass turns yellow by August. Not
dead, but asleep. Maybe practically
dead, since it doesn’t grow until
it rains. It hasn’t rained in weeks.

Why the wrens are silent before Winter

by Ergene Kim

the dying bit of bluegrass
in the shallow corners of
the darkened meadow, covered
with the shadow of snow,
must have forgotten. There are
no wrens in winter.

and so the lone wind
sings again among the willows.
Whoosh, whoosh, it says, and
the sound of midnight is not lost.
Dare to sing with me, says the Wren,
and she is gone, like all the rest.

Encounter on Effigy Hill

by Darrell Petska

Whomever you are,
leave this sacred mound
slumbering for millennia
among switchgrass and brome.

I am Turkey Mother,
spirit guardian of those
gone to the upper world
in the great migration of the dead.

Yes, run! And should you be spared
my pounding claws and lancing beak,
know I am pledged to my people
frantically calling me back.

A Horse Sees Things Differently

by Karen Poppy

Among each of these twenty
Snowy mountains, grass moves
If you look down to see it.

I look, and I nibble
As much as I can.
They want me to look up.
A blackbird shadows our sky.

I do not need to see
The blackbird to know
Its shadow.

Man fears more than he knows.
I fear some things I know,
And it’s not the blackbird.

I fear rain and wind,
But never snow, nor shadow.
I fear snapping twigs
Until they remind me to eat.

I see a maple leaf
And grow hungry for it,
Blackbird be damned.

The blackbird knows better.
It moves to a cedar tree.

The wind moves and fear runs
Through my ears and I
Mistake nothing of my fear.

A man and a woman
And a blackbird.
The taut
Telephone wires of my reins.

The river is moving.
So let me graze.
The blackbird watches overhead.

Imbros Gorge

by Joanne Veiss-Zaken

Uneven seam darts through Cretan rock
a crooked old man through eons

where donkeys once tread
paths spiral and turn
small tremors barely discernable
vibrate through the island

cicadas chant
forte then piano
entertaining those foolish enough
to walk the twisted line

wild goats watch and wonder
why we do this.

Acid Rain

by Violet Mitchell

Electricity is the cream filling of our country—
even the fish see it as art. Genocide is a strong adjective,

but there are ghosts who linger under highways, dead with
half-tweeted comments. We make crop circles out of juice

boxes, conspiracies from viewfinder scratches. Our misplaced
strands of hair became the fuses for abundant plastic lighters.

Soon we will feast on chicken pot pie, but all the birds OD’d
on hormones and now we eat the extra platypuses that wash

ashore. You & I dig our toes in glowing sand, nets in hand,
scouting for dinner and anything normal.

Skating on Thin Ice

by John Dorroh

                                   data-driven dreams of majestic
white mountains, of fur and snow and ice, jutting
thousands of meters into a frigid blue sky

                                    birthing glaciers for ruby-cheeked
tourists, too anxious for the all-you-can-eat buffet, forget
the puffins and whales who will always be on exhibit here
in this frozen wasteland

                                    our clock is speeding up, accelerating,
in fact, along a doomsday strip of thinning ice. we must kiss
this place, pull it in to our breasts, savor, leave it alone

U-nomia

by Josephine Greenland

A biological cartographer
in a bracken of unclassifieds
I pass through nomenclature
microscope for an eye.

Here is dwarf willow,
creeping the earth carpet
catkins tilted to buttercup sun
- the Ranunculus on cumulus.

Yellow catkins and red catkins,
I signify you male and female.

I classify you: woody plant, diocious.
I baptize you: Salix Herbacea,
I sample you: Regnum Vegetabile.
I dry your leaves, for montage in glass.
I translate you.
Perhaps
I forget you.

I walk for etymology.

My undulating latin tracks
mapping stony Nordic expanse.

Here, the genus of bell heathers.
There, the acidity of wolf lichen.

A biological cartographer
in an ecology of names
trampling the bracken of unclassifieds.

The Sky Ungainly

by David Anthony Sam

Becoming one with slow wind,
the heron rises in awkward launch

to gray uncertainty of clouds,
mist wavering dawn light.

This ungainly flight wisdoms
in feathers and spindly legs,

lifting from the long patience
of stillness and waiting.

She flies hollow bones that
inward shape her rising to gray light.

A squall descends, disappearing
her feathered motion into mist.

Summer Harbor Fall Shore

by Michael Mogel

The growling morning sea invades the pier and gulps the wooden legs that sway high tide.  Here migratory fish feed among the weeds; and boys with worms and lines play tag up on the pier.  The flapping chilly bass with swelling gills are picked up by the tail – dropped in canvas sacks to die. The boys withdraw when fish dart away. Then low noon tide leaves slime on the pier where salted wooden planks sun dry until high tide.  Sun browned grass growing in the sand bends death like as if praying for a merciful intermission.  The fall invasion wastes no time.  Rocks jounce on blowzy glass; above the sea-smashed shells the seagulls hunt trapped small fish and junk from picnics left last June. A dory moored against the waves slams a quay whose old gray boards twist and creak; the bracing poles stand firm in gale.  Boat shaped clouds drift by as salted wind blows down and down the wet weed shore and smooths the glass that's made from sand, sandblasts the junk, and turns the shells to dust.

Morning Light

by Ed Jones

Once, I said Pine has fingers but I was wrong.
Each arm has one hundred green fans performing
Japanese rituals.  Everything effortlessly coordinated
By Wind.  The great arms of the pine bow and beckon,
And the fans attend every movement, solicitous as
Geisha without the encumbrance of arousal.

Now this morning light is so pure
Nothing gets in the way of gray shingles,
Jade trim, cornice and shadow, the curl of
Sycamore leaves hanging thick as dried figs
In a skittering of branches.  Even the dog’s bark
Is transparent in this early light:  good morning.

Wind commands pine fans to tickle air
With their fingers!  Look, there, I was not wrong.
Such is the power of the grand choreographer today,
Transforming fans to fingers and back again.

And light still falls evenly on everything
Even as shadows climb down the roof, two leaves
Twitch in the wind, and the fans either spread
Or do not spread their fingers attending to the world.

When I decide I've had enough

by Laila Maged

You ruin my fertile land
You smoke away my sky
You gaze at me with greed-filled, ungrateful eyes
You named me a possession,
Planted your flags on my once-peaceful ground
Then killed one another over it
and searched for redemption never to be found.
I warned you once
Then warned you once again
I’ve stricken back many times
But you’ve proven you do not understand
In the end, it is still I who shelters you;
It is I who keeps you alive
I urge you to throw your trash in my lakes;
I urge you to smoke your issues away
I urge you to waste my pure water with your filthy bathes,
And give birth to an amount of offspring I cannot sustain,
while never giving thought to that fateful day,
when I finally decide that I've had enough.

Cuckoo

by Neil Brosnan

I blame the parents more than the youngsters
Those most deceitful of our refugees.
Planners and plotters, ingrained imposters,
Covertly winging from far overseas.

‘Shush,’ snaps the dunnock from under the sedge,
The marsh warbler’s song cut short in his throat
Mute pipits cringe at the still meadow’s edge
High up above them resounds the next note.

Tunefully perfect, evolved to enthral
Proclaiming his realm; his objectives clear
Shamelessly calling from dawn to nightfall
Stark confirmation that summer is here.

Have we ever heard this cuckoo before?
Will he return here - once, twice, or no more? 

The Man Who Spoke To Catkins

by Josephine Greenland

Etymology is written in the pistil. I trace it in the catkin; that little cat’s tail pinched between my fingers. Read it, through the microscope; hold it there, up to the stem, yellow hairs pressing against the glass. See the words now, all lower case, nestled under the flower cluster. Gynoecium, single carpel, raising its filaments to cover itself. The pistil is a shy little thing; look how it bends its head, tucking its chin in for modesty. Bend down, put the glass aside and use your ears as microscopes. The camp grows thick with whispers, of convergent evolution and ancestral inflorescence: the systems of nature through the kingdoms of nature, according to the species, the synonyms, the places. Dig down, root your fingers, absorb the words into your skin for safekeeping, they must be intact when you write them down. When plants speak, the biologist is the student; he must learn patience to capture their words.

Cousins

by Ed Jones

My inebriate cousins the mosquitos
Have whined and probed and sucked
All night long, leaving us swatting
At them even in our dreams and now
Fleeing before the sun they return
Besotted with blood, slippery
With intercourse, desiring only
Some tireful of musty rain water
To lay themselves down,
A scene burgeoning with vast sexual
Activity, a flotilla of filmy eggs.
And already they are asleep, no
Hangover, simply content in an
Exhaustion soon perfected in death
Which means nothing to them.
In three days their myriad corpses
Return as home:  bacterial nest,
Swamp grass, algal bloom.  We hate
Such thoughtless prolixity, don't we,
We Mayflower descendants, disturbed
By all that blindly plunges or
Prefers night to day or remorselessly
Dreamlessly does what it wants,
What it needs, what it must.

Barnegat Bay, After the Storm

by Elizabeth Higgins

Dune grass casts shadows
on the rain-stung sand.
The gulls glide silent
on the bloated sea,
storm-swollen, crashing
blindly into moss-caked rock.
Beach roses drink
the salt-spray, shiver
in the empty sky, sing
magenta through the endless
gray. The egret watches
from the sawtooth pier, unfurls
his white neck. A purple vein
of lightning carves
the fog. He lifts his wings
over wave crests, swallowed
by the white mist.
He arcs back once,
then disappears.

Portrait of Birch and Fir

by Floyd Cheung

white claws pierce green torso

paper thin branches
stretched through its neighbor
by inches over many seasons

Ice Fishing on Lake George

by Mathew Weitman

All at once, the fish erupts
from the augur’s hole
& lies panting, and kicking
as it reddens the snow;
nearby, a group of gulls
watches with open mouths.
This is not the reason
that seagulls believe in the paranormal:
an uncanny ability that a fish has
to bring itself back from death
by flapping. It is however,
the reason that seagulls fly.

Lake Mono Walk

by E. Margareta Griffith

puffy gray boulders, all air and ashes
charcoal-black small stones, gleaming in the sun
spilled down the mountain like costume jewelry
souvenirs of volcanic bonfire

Ivy

by Shannon Donaghy

Ivy creeps up the side
Of the red brick chimney
And coils around string lights
Left over from Christmas time

The vines have pushed through
The wire loops of the reindeer’s eyes
He sports a Persian green disguise
Over the stark-white of his wire bones
His proud antlers – the only bit of him that shows

If I plugged him in
The leaves would glow
The extension cord has been
Chewed through, though
And the outdoor outlet is half-broken
From last year’s snow

This Lily

by Tim Gorichanaz

What’s so unsettling about this lily
I say,
Is that it’s just like me.

A big storm comes in and floods the pot and the next day you think it’s finally done for but lo and behold it gets back up, turgid, it

Smells in the summertime of our bedroom,
A human ferment it

Flowers again even when the other plants have given up it

Perhaps knows there will be
An end
Written in the world all around but

For now, the sun is out

Shenzhen retouched

by Dawid Juraszek

Two birds came down the road
their heavy snake-like tails
enmeshed with dusty trees.

They stirred the burning air
above the ceaseless rush
their song greyed out by din.

Then hopped along the curb
their colours lost on all
the hurried and the stressed.

Their wings unrolled, they flew
across the Xinhu Street
amid the hurtling surge.

And then you fear they now belong
in a convenient zoo
with rapid eyes and velvet plumes
not broken on the wheels.

The shapes and sounds and sights
that made their world – retouched.

"black cormorant, whirlpool"

by Miriam Sagan

black cormorant, whirlpool
reversing rapids
pulled by tide
Bay of Fundy…
stink of the pulp
and paper plant
a boat
a view from a bridge…
whatever taught me
to see things as they are
not as I wish them:
I’ll call “sensei”

Eudaimonia

by Don Thompson

Water grass knee-high in ditch bottom muck:
A green so intense it would last all summer
And then some in a better world.
But here it dries up in a week.

Sub Storm

by Michael H. Brownstein

Today is Friday, tomorrow the beginning of next week,
An angry grumbling of earth, the heat a shower of shame,
Rising water, a plastic death to the ocean, things look bleak.
Today is Friday, tomorrow the beginning of next week.
Where is the Cuban Coney, the Sardinian Pika, the prairie leek,
The Jamaican Monkey, the Bulldog rat, the prame?
Today is Friday, tomorrow the beginning of next week,
An angry grumbling of earth, the heat a shower of shame.

By The Cauvery

by Rashmi Vesa

Crystal clear Cauvery calms the roaring sun
light showers douse a river ablaze,
rousing green,sprouting life.
The serene waters deceptively cloak
vertiginous whirlpools looking for prey,
masheers play, twirl away
confounding egrets and
painted stork alike.
At the cusp of twilight
a teasing sliver of silver moon,
herds elephants into water,
chinkaras call in the distance,
a light wind shifts sand
flaking gaur hoof prints.
The air is punched by pithy calls
of a cuckoo looking for another's nest,
a tiger sprawled over a crescent rock
waits for dark clouds to shroud the moon.
Quiet flows the Cauvery.

"It still surprises me"

by Miriam Sagan

It still surprises me
on a city street
how no one
crashes in to me, and I
avoid their feet—
cinquefoil on the mountaintop
blooms in its crevices
and a yellow throated green  warbler
sways on a branch

Ancient Ones

by Laara C Oakes

Spiraling up from the deep
in a whirlwind of slurry,
wakes a mighty force
born from power and fury.

Vernal fire cracks winter ice.
Atomic halation.
Stellar combustion.
Beginning creation.

Inspecting the Damage

by John Grey

I’m a friend to the lost
so farewell, alders, cedars.
My breath is a bell-tower
ringing silently.
Day’s sad light spreads
to include the few
Douglas firs not dragged away.

Suffering, pain,
echo of a buzz-saw,
bitterness,
everything oily to the touch,
senses at the crossroads,
hemlocks, moss, maidenhair,
mud-spattered grass, mushrooms –
the wreckage of yesterday’s logging –
scorched earth unveils its meaning.

Brown Field in Summer

by Taylor Graham

All this dead bio-mass still standing – shoulder-
high wild oats over a thickly woven pad of vetch
and clover the nitrogen-fixers, bull-thistle
crowned in spiky purple blossom in May,
beloved of goldfinch. By June, stiff and brown,
flammable. Also foxtail and rip-gut brome, bane
of passing creatures. But the phoebe still
finds insects in this sunburnt jungle, the turkeys
lead their chicks through, pecking who knows
what. Spring green has spent its seed;
the annuals’ life after death, to come again
next year, for goldfinch, turkey, phoebe.

"The dog and I climb the hill,"

by Eliza Mimski

The dog and I climb the hill,
The crepuscular light, twilight,
The birds with their consonants, their vowels.

The dog stops and smells the trees,
Drunk on their elixir.
The dog urinates
To say how much he loves them.

The tree is a bird planted in the ground.
Its wings are branches.
The tree is dark brown lush,
Shadow maker.

The light shifts,
The sky begins to close
As we make our way up the hill.

Ninety-five Days

by David Chorlton

The last time was a sprinkle.
Just enough
to tease flowers
out of the saguaro, and to wet
the air for arriving
doves.
         We don’t know
when we turn a faucet
where the water comes from
any more, while on the mountain
cholla needles shine
with thirst.
                It’s been ninety-five
dawns with scarcely
a cloud. But it helps to be
an animal to know
how dry the days have been:
                                             to wake
at dusk and wander. To remember
hidden springs. And when
they no longer flow
to climb
            up to the ridgeline
and lick salt
from the rim of the moon.

Haiku to the Moon

by Terrence Sykes

constellations play
kickball with the moon across
that vast milky way

Weed-Eating One's Own

by Taylor Graham

He aligns the swath straight as a pike
through headhigh wild oats and needled
brome. Assurance of long acquaintance.
The sun’s a little bit late to hit the swale,
the cusp of summer. A far extent of field
unmowed, uncharted though he knows
every foot of it. He could have paid
to have this done, but that would
neglect the connection a piece of ground
is owed, the owner always in its debt.

The Koi

by Michael Medler

She lies,

lumpish and still
where the heron killed her,
entangled in her own entrails,
beyond swallow size.

Her sallow scales glint
in angular morning light. One
eye might catch the quick
of clouds, the other gazing

down where she left eggs
for spring. She gapes,
wavers in ripples, torn
where water falls, coasting

in sublime ugliness. Not
even food for the bird;
just kill. Just where her time
let her lie. Just there.

The Bench Behind Stone Hall

by Shannon Donaghy

I wonder who it was that decided
That we should get to glimpse the Meadowlands
Beyond the suburbs of Little Falls
And just before the sprawling skyline
Over the sawed-off necks of cedar trees
Heads somewhere by the street down below

I sit a bit to the side of all that
Where the trees are still intact
Oaks and birches and underbrush
The bench where a mother racoon
Has been rumored to sit
After sifting through the garbage
There’s so little room for all this up here
Deer lingered outside my window last year
Leaning like billy-goats against
The sloping rocks of Clifton’s cliffs

I guess we’re all too busy
Gawking at the city lights
Out there in the mountainous middle distance
To notice the massacre

My Tiny Bit of Green

by Azrael Tseng

On Earth Day I plant a tiny sapling
in a nice spot with lots of sun and space.
It looks so skinny, such a fragile thing --
I wonder why the teachers clap and praise.

“You kids are like this tree-to-be -- so small,
but you are both the future of this Earth.
Now learn this most crucial lesson of all --
replant, retell the story of its birth.”

I do as my teacher says and water
my tiny sapling every day with care.
I do it for the ones who don’t bother
but sometimes I cry out loud, "It’s not fair!"

“It’s only because there are those like you
who do their bit to help save our planet,
that we still have a chance to start anew,
undo the bad by those who began it.”

Well, I started this tiny bit of green,
and although it may not seem very much,
it adds a splash of color to the scene --
in twenty years it'll be too tall to touch.

If only it makes it. I go one day,
heavy watering can hanging from an arm,
to find them all cut down and thrown away --
all we planted with their tree-to-be charm.

Where warm soft grass once fluffed under our feet,
now splayed lumpy earth like churned up porridge.
Growling from the fenced-off grounds of concrete,
dozers prowl like guard dogs to discourage.

But the part that really makes my heart sink?
The sign out front reads -- ‘Future Builders Inc.’



Written by Azrael Tseng on 23/04/2017, inspired by the sight of his second-graders planting sapling for agriculture.

Monks' Garden

by Terrence Sykes

fig shadows & apothecary roses
sprawl & almost
consume & reconstruct
ancient greenhouse ruins

bees flourished contentedly
amongst saliva & rosemary
countless healing herbs
outlined that enclave

comfrey once
healed bones & wounds
now twists upon
broken beams

seemingly now only
divine intervention could
resurrect this sacred
abandoned garden

Caw

by Amanda Eagleson

          This cool wet April

            this damp delay

  spreads the Still Creek Roost

         a murder of grey sky

                  Until May

  black feathers, feet, and beak

             In June we nest.

Capture This

by Jules Henderson

Wild jasmine and gardenia arrest the senses,
and the shores of Haleiwa are crowded with cliff-diving natives.
Rain cascades down walls of molecules that hide themselves in sun rays;
we are heathens but we breathe in their mana, assuming it is ours to claim.
          (Still, this is not appropriation)
Sleet grey lava stone whispers prophecies to cherry hibiscus:
Next year at this timethe water will be too toxic to drink.
In the sand, our fingers mimic Cezanne’s strokes to capture this fleeting moment—
why is life a canvas only
to those who bow
humbly to the heart?
Pele either creates or destroys; she does not preserve.
We take our cues from her to fashion our days
and dance like sphinx inside plumerias in search of wine.

An Australian summer

by James Aitchison

Grieving hills,
Your silky trees consumed by fire.

In the angry afternoon
The heat strangles a breeze at birth,

And the wild night claims
The leavings of the day.

How Can You Keep A Weather Eye Out If You Can’t See?

by Jeff Bernstein

It is just one murky Vineyard night:
cinnamon swirls of fog droplets collect
everywhere like transparent cotton candy
spun on a machine of twisted oaks
and brown leaves as they strain
and lisp over Up-Island roads.

Lighthouses signal sadly across
the Sound but no one watches
anyhow. Light chop slaps
the few fishing boats still tied up
at Dutcher Dock, two old cobraheads
sputter above the parking lot
and a single light burns
inside the lobster pound.

Gulf Branch

by Ben Nardolilli

Spring approaches, it is warm enough
To crawl through the wide open drain pipe
And listen to the traffic going overhead

The run has lost its icy cover,
Water flows around our shadows as we balance
Over the rocks that are moss-free for now

On the other side, we look up at the white
Spaces between the tree branches,
They shelter us with the end of all expression

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

one flick
    of a black-tipped ear--
      jackrabbit revealed

Copper River Salmon, Best in Alaska

by Sarah Henry

It must be hard to be a salmon,
mouthed by a bear
and dragged to the woods

or caught by men
with fishing boats,
thwacked against the sides.

Times are tough
when eagles screech
and dip too low.

Luck and instinct
lure them
as the river swarms

with millions running
to their summer
destination.

Over a wave,
one salmon leaps
a single arc of possibilities.

Afternoon at Rockaway, Oregon

by Daniela Lorenzi

At last the fog is lifting.
Its echo hangs in the air—
a haze over sand and water
refracting tepid sunlight; now
the waves that boom
to shore glint silver, a never-
ending attack and retreat
a thousand icicles
skipping on the crests.