Lines

by Mona Bedi

summer sun
a lapwing struts
across the Murray

Mystery

by Jan Wiezorek

Grasses like dried branches
this spring along the creek.

Green prints, eyes placed, 
small fists, lines drawn 

like vision or desire.
The grey turkeys get up

and fly fifteen or twenty
to the limbs, where 

they disappear.
Diminished speech,

alphabetic, to land 

on a hanging “Y”

or a sleeping “P.” 

Chasing the hillside 

with a voice—

muffled and heard

straight

from trees, 

falling bark, needles, 

rounding and rolling

to a natural 

carpet

of mystery.    

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.

I Wish I Were Whitman

by Anthony Snider

listening to the sailor.
His mouth – all pride
speaking the steel ship –
its many cargoes –
his hand caressing the great grey hull
without its even knowing it was

smaller than the North Sea wave
that will push it (building even now
moving to where they will meet)
china and motors and sailors

back up the river of goods
past the showroom and warehouse
the fabricators, machinists, past
silver and bauxite and bales of white
cotton biding time
in the break in bulk ports

to the many points of genesis –
birth in the warm dark soil
precipitate chemistry
and angry groaning magma.

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

Death grip

by Sunil Sharma
 
Blue-bosomed
Yamuna
gasps 
in the embrace
of hyacinths.

evening puja

by Mona Bedi

evening puja
we dance to the sound of cymbals
on the Haridwar ghat

morning dew

Mark Gilbert

morning dew
daisies yet to open
and the stream

childhood river

by Chen-ou Liu

the murmur
of this childhood river 
same old me, and yet...

Lines

by Tony Williams

dawn
Aberdeen's homeless
wakened by gulls

Lines

by M. R. Pelletier

Night shift—
   the weeds collect
   beads of dew

Lines

by Chen-ou Liu

a staring contest
with myself in the store window ...
red-tag food prices

Lines

by Monica Kakkar

sakura peak blooms

welcome honshu's spring goddess
red list gifu chō

Series

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

1.
Pluie tôt le matin
Un simple mot pour la grâce
Les morts répètent
 
Early morning rain
A simple word for grace
                                                              The dead rehearse

2.
Das Yin-Yang-Eigelb
gut/böse Muscheln brechen auf
Caw caw caw-caw-caw
\
The Yin-Yang yolk
Good/evil shells crack open
                                                             Caw caw caw-caw-caw
3.
Vuelos de colibrí
Abrir la cremallera
Nada sublime
 
Hummingbird flights
Unzip
                                                               Sublime nothingness
4.
Palillos de lluvia revuelven
Sufrimiento y adoración
como uno y el mismo
 
Chopsticks of rain stir
Suffering and adoration
                                                              As one and the same
5.
Aðallega bara úr vatni
Við getum alltaf hellt
Fyrir utan hið þekkta
 
Mostly made of just water
We can always pour
                                                                 Beyond the known

withered reeds

by Tony Williams

withered reeds
a crow rinsing its beak
in the Kelvin

Bali Metamorphosis

 by James Penha

rainy season replenishes
little Yeo Ho
to become a river raging

John Berryman's Splash

by Jerome Berglund

Washington Bridge
takes a step
poet sound  

River cairn

by Randy Brooks

river cairn
come spring will it
remember me?

Sentried against an unrelenting foe

 by Herb Tate
 
Sentried against an unrelenting foe 
    Of ice and wind, hail, rain, and baking sun; 
    Each battle drawn but, oh, so wearisome, 
That now the Juniper, once proud, bends low.

 
And etiolated limbs that long ago 
    Propped up the sky reach down instead undone, 
    In strength, by time, yet all still needed so 
This tree may be, in this place, ever known. 

Would people cling so stubbornly and trust 
    To single spot against such force, or wilt 
In their resolve and seek another haven? 
    Some do find cause and fight the craven 

Impulse to survive untouched, their inbuilt 
    Sense that suffering borne is noble and is just. 

Listen, You

 by Ingrid Bruck

blue sky repeats repeats blue water
it's hot enough for summer but it's fall
and Novemeber's not the time to pick blueberries in Wisconsin 
a pileated woodpecker bigger than the feeder 
swings and pecks 
two carolina wrens and a nut hatch watch
sky glowers gray
the mistakes we made with everything 
a cloud choke
a cold and hot front clash 
a torrent
in the octoraro watershed
creek banks overflow
from east branch & west branch 
from pequea creek & midle creek 
from the conestoga to the susquehanna river 
mud flows in the run 
death before death
wind pummels leaves off a pussy willow bush
heat pelts late fall
a litany of climate change
the chance / to stand on the corner & tell earth goodby
listen you, wake up!

(After: Lines from Amy Miller's "To Whoever Inherits the Earth" at Rattle: 
listen, you
the chance / to stand on the corne & tell earth goodby*
the mistakes we made with everything 
death before death
*Amy Miller credits her poem being inspired by William Stafford's Poem 'Waiting in Line': 'the chance / to stand on a corner and tell it goodby!' )
https://www.rattle.com/to-whoever-inherits-the-earth-by-amy-miller/

Lines

by Susan Bonk Plumridge

a different trail
through the winter woods
a V overhead

Lines

by Ceri Marriott

open season over
the pheasant tries his luck
across the road 

wandering days

 by Milan Rajkumar and Christina Chin 

wandering days –
near a wayside hut
ripening plums 
across the fields 

squawks of parakeets 

Iowa River

by Jerome Berglund

river or field
through dim trees and snow
hard to say

Lines

by Randy Brooks 

following the Kanawha river
through the mountains
the only way

American Sonnet (After: Nomad Poem by Pierre Joris)

by Ingrid Buck

baby boomers, a multitude
on the move from one other to another other   
we steal and cheat in match-girl's story, 
we are rocks in pockets of medicare, social security, young workers
los jóvenes. sin zapatos, sin comida, sin centavos
   la pobre niña tiene hambre y mucho frio

so many viejos 
our world on fire 
each body, a suitcase, 
sits packed at the door

a comet streaks
greed fans iceball flames
age speeds time 
       
wetravel        onebyone         light into the night
wewalk         alone                 upthemountain  
freezewrapped in the same half-blanket we leave our children
no food or water needed this trip       
no time to douse fires we started

what we leave behind 
  under a bleak winter sky
     pockmarked with stars
         ¡Pobrecito! poor cold child
       
            little match-girl
         flares and drops

Crisis Actoran oral history

by Steve Straight

I started out legit, doing those drunk driving crash demos
at the local high schools.  In the van I’d change
into my bloody shirt and ripped jeans.  Did my own makeup, too,
got really good at gashes.  I could tell I had something
by the looks on the kids.  They couldn’t keep up
their cool faces when we brought the real.

I was too old for a Sandy Hook kid,
but I could pass at Parkland, they said,
and sent me a first-class ticket.
I played three different victims for that one,
just changing my shirt and hat.
You have to be careful of cell phones now.
Word could get out, like it did for David Hogg.

Then the big one, Vegas in ’17, what a logistical nightmare,
hauling in the full stage, all that equipment,
building those huge hotel sets.  Took weeks.
Two more victims that time, carted off on stretchers.
Damn guy playing an EMT whacked my head
swinging me into the ambulance.  Bled for real
that time, needed three Advil.

It’s so simple to get parts now with a supposed
mass shooting every month—like that would really happen.
I did that church thing outside Charleston in ’15,
played my first cop.  Orlando was cool,
that nightclub one, but we went through blood packs
like water.  Those clothes are permanently stained.

The guy who played the perp in Boulder
let me handle his AR-15.  Told me the ammo fires
at three times the speed of sound!  Man, just holding it
made me want to shoot someone.

Hold up, gotta check that text.  It’s them,
all right.  They want me down in Washington
again.  More Antifa bullshit.

Lines

by David Josephsohn

the creaky warnings
of dry limbs
—slow reflexes

Lines

by Tom Lagasse

hiding in grasses
the peepers announce it’s spring
the pond warms and trembles

Dawn Delicious

by Radomir Vojtech Luza

Tiger flashing
Across bubble gum sky
Like witches lost in lies

Clouds like alabaster islands
Floating towards cobalt orb

Oaks like sentries
Guarding royal entries

Olive bushes near poppy meadows
Like raspberry rushes on happy willows

Opening the shimmering light
With comets, stars and a neon mars

Early hours embroidered in rain
Crimson flowers masked in shame

Heatwave

by Lavana Kray

City suffocated by heatwaves and face masks. Early in the morning, already on the road, to the mountain, we get stuck in a traffic jam that pushed drivers out of their cars, yelling by the roadside. A few cyclists overtake us, some slow-moving sheep pass us by, while a cloud grows crane wings. I close my eyes and turn ambient music with rain sounds on, leaving my thoughts to wander barefoot in a glade of wild mint, birds, butterflies and ozone.

village on fire –
two storks chop up
the sky

Definition in the face of an unnamed grief

 by Deborah A. Bennett 

to know it is to know your own hand
opening, to exhale to be bodiless
whether mad with joy or sorrow
steeped in vine or briars 
all reason glows in simplicity 
the world is out of your eyes
it is always june & you are walking
in the cool of the day
hearing its name in the wind
in the root light sings, laughter
breaks in its stems, fills the
petal folds with music old as sun
& dew & summer
in the heart makes flesh of heaven
spirit of earth
in the head tangles round & waits
in the mouth blossoms with thorns
& with leaves sweet & ripe
as an apricot 
broken open.

Lines

by  C.X. Turner

full worm moon plucked from the soil

Lines

by Chen-ou Liu

algae blooms ...
beneath the surface
of his anger

Lines

by Maria Mathai

Ripples of wind
Shiver the leaves of a willow tree
Rain drops speckle wood

Lines

by Ulrike Narwani 

scorched hillside
fireweed
ablaze, ablaze

Lines

by Hifsa Ashraf

April morning chill 
a bamboo partridge’s call
rippling the stream 

Three Photogarphs G. Tod Slone

 

Lines

by  I.W.B.S. Sister Lou Ella Hickman

an old frog singing 
a flash of green startles 
winter now is over 

Through the Desert’s Eye South Mountain, Phoenix

by David Chorlton         

The bones roll loosely underneath
a coyote’s skin, the spine a tangle
with his ribs and every limb
a lightness strong
enough to carry him where
he needs to go.
                           The ice has fallen
from the moon
and South Mountain warms
from a yawn to a smile.
                                             A fallen
saguaro is part memory
part earth, and asks
whether the coyote
was actually here, or turned
from fact to mystery
                                     when he stopped
looking left, right and inward.
There’s hidden chatter
in the mesquites and cholla
of mockingbirds and thrashers
seeking out the starting point
of spring.
               The sky is balanced
on the ridgeline. Each ascending trail
winds its way to where
nobody can follow except the hawk
with shadow
                       for a wingspan
who spirals into nothing
                                           and disappears
the way illusions do
when the Arizona desert blinks.

Lines

by Ron Scully

upper Merrimack
the gull out of scent
of the Gulf of Maine

Lines

by Hifsa Ashraf

late winter afternoon 

slipping into the dust haze
a junglefowl’s crow

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

Mountain elk
graze snow-brushed grass
tilted antlered sky

Lines

by Michael Riedell   

bear creek valley—
three old cows corralled
in winter rain

Lines

by James Kangas

bedroom floor shadows
of two frigid legs walking
in windowed moonlight

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

footprints leading
to the sandstone cistern
filling with snow

Lines

by Chen-ou Liu

job interview
winter morning darkness 
at the bus stop

Motus Plantis

by Moray McGowan

Indignant pines stare down the woodsman 
Shame him, till he hangs his yellow helmet on a branch 
And shuffles back to camp 
 
Wheat stalks cup their ears 
For the harvester’s throb 
Then blind the driver with a storm of phosphate dust 
 
Furtive carrots couple in the soil 
Their blissful misshapen children 
Send packaging robots into tantrums of despair 
 
Roses mourning their beheaded offspring 
Put away their pretty pastels for the nonce 
Their next dull blooms, unplucked, set seed 
 
Poodle-clipped privet grows steely stems 
Bouncing the shears back on their own cable 
Banish the bandaged gardener to a bench. 
 
Potatoes shrug off their mounded earth 
Greened, inedible, 
Sun-worshipping sprawlers on the soil 
 
Lettuces, though, throw themselves flat  
Overacting in their green doublets 
They let the slugs raze every last leaf 
 
Celery and rhubarb 
Sick, to their pale cores, of the blanching pot 
Up sticks in the early hours and hammer on the bedroom window  
 
And the lawn, the lawn! Aching for buttercups, 
Aching for clover, daisies, dandelions, 
It sends the mower slithering into the pond 
 
One night the pond too eats its own underseal 
Lily roots follow the seeping water 
Long-lost lovers reaching with blind fingertips for the earth  

Lines

 by Douglas J. Lanzo

sockeye salmon
steely-eyed resolve
spawning red, upstream

Tidal Flow

by Gary Beck

When I walk on the beach
I see the loneliness
of the Florida surfer,
who waits and waits
for the big wave
that never comes.