Lines

by Kelley J. White

peering through the mist
half day light
horses in the rain

Monastery

by Terrence Sykes

summer fragrance blooms
sweet peas sprawling in the ditch
planted years ago

monastic dweller
plum rain falls upon my soul
mulberries & tea

star dust labyrinth
water birch & willow trees
harvest quagmired hours

mirages olive groves
smudged silver grey leaves sway
chimera summer

raging thunderstorms
mythological proverbs
mere pilgrims we are

bitter wild lettuce
beneath this ancient chestnut
shading my body

seasons lie in wait
sweeping autumn leaves aside
chrysanthemums bloom

garden hours rust
weeds shall be our nourishment
share with the rabbits

morning rain mushrooms
soup simmering fire
fragrance of dried fennel seed

rivers of vines soar
cicadas call out to me
lightening bugs are stars

berries fermented
birds flint about the garden
bitter wine to pour

dawn came early
weaving fog in the relics
sprout laden garden

ashes of vespers
scattered upon fresco’d sky
wind tangles my soul

rest in this season
leaves dance in the wind
torn unread pages

pokeweed berry ink
now tobacco brown
once shone lilac brilliance

budding olive saplings
genuflect in the squall
mucked cardoons resurrect

virginia creeper
climbing like jacob’s ladder
hoeing the tilled fields

cloud constellations
voyages to fables isles
archipelagos

forage a craft
sail into oblivion
map my escape

clouds & fabled isles
prune that ruminating light
crayfish augury

chanting cicada
where is your monastery
heal my weary soul

Where There Are Forks

by James Penha

the Lehigh River
flowing shallow this spring
from lack of snowfall

the Lehigh River 
ranks second among toxic
US waterways

the Lehigh River
wholly owned by Lehigh Coal
till 1966

the Lehigh River’s
name stolen from Lenape
for where there are forks

Cowichan River, B. C.

by petro c.k.

riverbed rocks
exposed
salmon remains

Granchester Flows into the Cam

by Sarah das Gupta 

Move on, nothing here
 - only the flash
of a kingfisher's brilliance
only fine strands
of bright green hair
only the rise and fall
of clouds of gnats
only the last fingers
of light touching
the line of willows
only the first song
of the nightingale -
No, nothing
Nothing at all

Predator!

by Pranab Ghosh

One step in water
The shadow of the crane floats
Where are the fishes?

Temple of the Azure Clouds

by Uchechukwu Onyedikam/Christina Chin

Temple of the Azure Clouds 
beside the Keluang river—
snakes 
come to venerate
the monk's birthday 

Winnipeg River by Debbie Strange

 

Belisima Ribble

by Andrew Collinson
 
Trickles and drips from limestone lips
ichor, earthy wounds gentle issue
mossy Ribblehead springs and gills
Cam and Gayle beck’s confluence fresh and free
Piped by meadow pipit calls, Belisima Ribble
wends down - to suckle the Irish sea
 
Three peaks and Roman road near
crows-foot veins nourish flow. Jam, Syke, Shivery
Long, Lat and Mares Gill’s all make young
jugular Belisima grow. Dipper, plover
and stonechat love her, in punctuated
rapid’s steady melisma billow
 
Stumbling as tot over gritstone rock, a tyke finds her feet
more Yorkshire waters strive and meet
sheep-washing a dammed job for the youngster
She can be harsh and freeze and riffle in breeze
where Swale’s on their knee’s drink her
grey wagtail’s bob yellow, chit and thrive
 
Milled, wheeled and Pudsey leaped, energetic teen waters put to work
through Settle Gisburn Denham and Bolland, forded bridged and hipp-stoned
Past Fooden’s otter cave the rarely captive teenager slips through landscape
waters downhill escape, quietly moving, an occasional burble or
whispered swirl, a gently moving quiet girl
 
Her stony hips camouflage redshank and teetering sand piper
near kingfisher and martin’s holy banks. Shy, deceptively strong
naturally covert moving along -she’s smitten. The wild Hodder
industrial Calder and Belisima all wed near Mitton. Unquestioned
she rides Sale Wheel overt before Ribchester’s Roman ford
winding deep as cormorant’s fish, she’s wider, mature and lish
 
Belisima Ribble quietly broods with certain moods
she can giggle and laugh along the path and boil
in swollen rage. She will dance in fun, potter and run from
mountain issue to old age, coloured brackish
or clear, when the heavens come down she’ll turn
builder tea brown, flooding fascinating fear
 
The tide rips up a bore as curlew, oyster catcher and snipe probe mud
Thousand’s feed breed and nest round muddy reed
geese - red legged and brent witness Belisima Ribble’s
marshy manifold un-robe, Southport to St Annes
exhausted and spent, she lopes away - to suckle the Irish sea.

Extinct Today

by John Grey
 
So what in the world's gone now,
what forest, stream or maybe
parking lot, housing estate,
acquired its unknown absence.
 
No scrape, no whistle,
no pouncing on some tiny woodland
creature that has no clue how
much safer life's become.
 
Who marks down these things?
Who listens for the unheard echo?
Imagine it. Entire populations
of living creatures gone like some people.
 
No, you can't imagine it.
You don't know what to imagine.
So where’s the smooth handfish?
What about the harlequin frog?
 
Has anyone seen the stubfoot toad?
Or the spined dwarf mantis?

Now if you only had the corpse.
But no one knows one's needed.

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

last elephant
lurks at forest’s edge
disappearing with the trees

Lines

by Lynne Goldsmith

fireflies flashing bright
cold light dusk
summer magnolia trees

Consumption Advisories

by H. W. Day

Asiatic honeysuckle
stems breath & water,
life, & the twining vine of sweet death.

& such sweet death
appropriates a trolling misery
when fish are feeling lunar.
 
Below the glinted Tallapoosa
a $5 spinnerbait snags a Christmas tree
sunk the Winter prior. 

Lines

by Lynne Goldsmith

spring

eurasian doves

nest in blue spruce tree

Lines

by Carl Mayfield 

cooper's hawk swoop--
     eurasian collared dove
             everywhere

Lines

by David Josephsohn

gulls and garbage
we embrace 
on the beach

Rio Grande

by Eavonka Ettinger

Rio Grande
beside the north tree
teens drinking 

Vistula River, Poland

by petro c.k.

end of winter
a straw effigy
floats away

Painted willow

by Kimberly Horning

painted willow  a bent in the river

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