Change Of Color

by Denny E. Marshall

River flows downstream
In a different color
Past lost forever

Couplets

by Pepper Trail

Start with water or stone?  Stone.
No, water.  No, stone – stone.

So, a volcano – a lava flow?
Yes, then water.  Because otherwise – the moon.

Infiltrating every fault, eroding.  Yes,
freezing, thawing, cracking.  Habitat!

Now, lichens.  Eventually, a little soil.
Moss, succulents.  Flowers!

So, bees.  Lizards, mice finding shelter.
Then, snakes, owls.  Someday, forest.

It’s good, every kind of thing.
Every kind of thing – it’s good.

Landlocked

by Teuta Skenderi

It smells like my land,
like the soft soil in my mother’s garden
like a fistful of cold earth resting on my father’s chest.
It smells like seeds sprouting
and roses dripping dewdrops at dawn.

It smells like a hand-woven blanket
covering a stranger at night.

It smells like an untrodden forest and home-made wine,
like a coin rusting inside a wishing well.

It smells like wide open windows and doors,
a quince drying on the window sill waiting to be gifted.

It smells like a toothless kiss on a child’s forehead on his way to school.
It smells like a migrating bird’s feather free-falling.

It smells like my homeland in early autumn.

Sacred

by Khalilah Okeke

The paperbark tree swoons
into the scribbly gum.
They are lovers dancing in
morning’s still music.

Branches entwine—
arms reaching for lifetimes.

Rosellas flame
through a peacock feather sky-

swift sweeps of sunrise.

Snowy Owl New Jersey

by Elizabeth Fletcher

Silent arctic nomad
Snow feathered
Blizzard white
Gliding south on the Atlantic flyway
Drifting to the coastal dunes
Commands  an osprey’s stick nest
far from sliver foxes on the tundra

Impervious to the click and whir
of the dumbstruck
Thunderbird of ancient petroglyphs
scans
New  Jersey’s tidal marsh
Buffle heads and mallards paddle
wing beats away

At twilight, the owl
ghosts
the marsh stills

Across the channel
Atlantic City’s glass towers  rise
prism-cut

The Pelican Bone

by Pepper Trail

is full of light.
The bird, of earth, feeling aloft
with fingertips knit of cottonstuff
and sinew
rises, heavy as a child
out of reach always, then
grown, gone
leaving a memory of silence.

Evening

by Michael H. Brownstein

twilight over the Missouri
the shadow of ghost trees
paper birched and shedding:

a black current near the mud
and shells of clam and oyster
silver-sprinkle deep infested earth:

the coyote comes, the otter,
a few beavers, a family of possum
a then a bobcat thirsty-strong:

night begins to shade everything with new
songs reaching into the growing
dark, the bobcat splashes water on its face

twilight thick with trees, crickets, a forest

Grackles

by Linda Gamble

a multitude dots bare branches
their grating calls
like a thousand rusty hinges

black banner unfurls
takes flight
crosses the street
descends    shrouds
the ground two houses down

with a great beating of wings
they rise
dip    turn    land
once
and twice again
in synchronized formation

with military precision
they manuever down the road
blue jay jeers from high above

Choreographed Buzzards

by Wesley D. Sims

Aerial acrobatic show—
wake of turkey buzzards surf
the blue ocean of wind,
black bodies glistening, their silver
wing tips splashed by sunshine.
Like practiced dancers transitioning
through routines, they cycle up the cove,
shifting, changing patterns, congregated
first in a circle, followed by momentary
square, then a trapezoid, now a Dipper
constellation, followed by a dotted spline
that torques and bends into a question
mark, as if to ask—what is this?

Training run for young buzzards?
Some vulture-peculiar ritual
practiced in mating season?
A random drifting, sniffing,
sailing excursion over the lake?
Maybe it’s just a Sunday afternoon
surfing flight, admiring the sites
and gawking at humans.

Dragonfly Days

David Chorlton

There’s a thin skin of air
lying over the pond
where dragonflies float
in September.
                       A Common Green Darner,
light as a wish,
with one wing for minutes
and one for the hours,
marks time as it crosses the water.
Summer goes slowly
                                    down to the carp;
a year drifts away
to the mountain. The heat’s lost
its edge, shadows
have teeth, while
                              two hawks in place
for the cool time of year
are quotation marks
for a silence as wide
as the sky,
                  and a vulture
hangs on a thread
down from the lingering sun.

Blackberries and Thistle

by Lorraine Carey

Random splodges of blackberries
stain the village and it's winding
pavements. The splatters
from starlings scatter wide -
the fuzzy circles, like signs.
Full bellies heavy in flight,
with pickings
from heaving brambles.

Roadside thistle of palest lavender,
forsakes its thorny bristle,
as furred heads of softest mink
hang on, until the wind shakes
and whistles through.
Autumn sneaks in, mulches leaves
and strips flower beds
with the efficacy of a thin lipped wife
and her Friday laundry.

They fly low, the murmuration,
with their mutterings
in warbles and whistles
chattering rattles and sharp trills.
Mimics and whirrs fill up
the evening sky and clouds roll
in a gambolled elegance of tumbleweed.

The Opposite of Town

by Todd Mercer

As
far
from one
interstate
as you get before
drawing closer to another,
forty-eight mile stretch with one gas station. Hills have eyes
situation, where city folks flee
before sundown, scared.
Near-empty
country,
too
still.

Every Day is a Good Day(after the calligraphy of Keido Fukushima)

by Neil Ellman

Every day is a good day
to breathe the ocean’s air
and walk along the shore
dodging waves
like sanderlings
and listening to the rush of surf
speak of the eternal
ebb and flow
that lift the heart
as hour-glass sands
sink beneath our feet.

Arizona Dust

by M.S. Camacho

I live with the dust.
The furniture has a fine coating.
My husband’s boots.
My face and chest.
Sunspots and fine hairs
on my cheeks glow.

Coming down from the buttes
on to the hummingbird’s wings.
To the bat’s dinner song, and
between the saguaro’s crevices.

What a blessing should it
rain while the sun looked on
And while the cicadas
Sang before nightfall.

Cleanse me with ozone,
creosote bushes, and full moons.
Then, anoint me again with the
Desert’s fine red powder.

Confidence Question

by John Zedolik

A hundred yards to the shore
to solid earth, deliverance
and driving off,

just a jump—come on—
bathtub deep, lemon-yellow
squeezy ducks at the bouncing bottom

if you happen to drop down
into those depths beyond the green-black
surface, but you’ll skim

this with your strong strokes on only
this greatest and most northerly lake

don’t worry about the mischief of strong current
at a constant forty degrees. The boat’s too slow,
and five p.m. is far in the future.

The plunge will take you now.

The First Rule of Substrata:You Don’t Talk About Substrata

by Todd Mercer

There’s The Underground,
which everyone’s familiar with,
your standard shadow networks,
grey-to-black markets.
I’m talking about the underground
that people in the regular one
have only heard rumor about.
Below the sewer tunnels,
barely above
the collective unconscious,
the hydrologic caverns,
steaming mantle,
boiling molten core.

The Old Stone Wall

by Anne McMaster

So much is lost.
I walk the lane this silent autumn night
up towards the old farm.
A soft mist hangs low on empty, moss-edged fields
and the patient wildflower scent is strong.
Three small girls – three ghosts –
tumble behind me as I go:
racing past me up the summer lane to find their father at the hay -
chasing a small dog, yelping, laughing,
carrying a bottle of tea and a wrapped piece for the hungry man.
Walking behind the trailer on an autumn dusk
hair prickling with flecks of straw
mouths sweet and dark with blackberries
plucked warm from an August hedge.
Then huddled, silent and golden-eyed on a dark October night
watching bonfire sparks burst up to the stars -
their peach-soft skin blushed with heat
each goose-bumped with fear of the encroaching night.

The lands and farm are gone.
Sold on, re-worked, the houses razed.
Only the old stone wall – aged older than the girls – remains.
We climbed it then
a barrier rough and tall;
a challenge to our brief-lived years.
Now, tonight, I see it as a thing of timeless beauty:
of workmanship and pride.

The three small girls tumble over it
riotous and laughing
and are gone.

Eternity Turn

by Winston Derden

Consider the cleverness of the Cooper’s hawk
who glides disguised the upslope of the roof,
crests the ridge, and dives on pigeons
perched at the feeder hanging from the eave next door:

the crash and sway, the spilling of seeds,
the prey pinned against the box,
the futile flap of wings
as talons sink in, and the predator

rises above the roofline, bundle compacted,
elevating toward hungry chicks hidden away
in a nest new-found since the city sawed down
the elm that canopied the park, a disease in its heart.

Pestilence and predation invert the arc;
the cycle turns on the wings of a hawk.

Late September

by Ben Rasnic

Earth sheds
its worn, frayed coat
of Indian Summer,

cools in the silent
avalanche
of deep, sleeping leaves. 

Hush

by Kimberly Behre Kenna

The secret of dawn
Tucked in the cup of the moon
Dark brew, gold nectar

Uruguayan Autumn

by Terrence Sykes

orchards so ancient
now copse
olives & quinces
gather along  the ridge
as it slopes toward the arroyo grande
bulrushes  & cattails
merge coverage confuse
water & terra firma

ombra of figs clustered about
our little yet warm cottage
autumn rains already filled
heady aromas in the empty
mushroom baskets commingling
with the fragrance of last night’s
boiled cabbage and boar
eggs & potatoes pile
upon the overflowing table

chest of drawers laden
with forage jams
cupboards hold jars
pickled okra & green beans
harvested from the reluctant garden
rutabagas & pumpkins await in the
darkened unheated stone room
with garlic from several moons ago

all these a bit of autumn light
stored away to ward off
darkness of winter
clouds block the sky
dawn will arrive
of its own will

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.