Carrion

by John Grey

The crows perch on the upper branches,
three glossy-coated undertakers
clucking how good they have it.

On the roadway below,
small mammals chance their luck,
are surprised to find they have none.

Squirrel squashed overnight,
the crows drop down for burial rites,
their beaks for pall-bearers,

stomachs for coffins.
Occasional cars interrupt the ceremony.
But these birds are not at risk from traffic.

Their radar sends them skyward
should anything approach.
Then the coast clears, the service recommences.

The crows are no choir. No mistaking them
for summer warblers. Their loud caw celebrates
a reverent feast, a glorious interment.

Grass

by Lydia Chapman

Grass among gravestones
keeping good company
to the forgotten

Just a Trim

by Darrell Petska

Cottonwood
ragged
rustling

billowing squall line
strikes

branches clash:
east-leaning, diseased lateral,
hanging stub, taken

west-facing lateral branch
pared,
weakly ascending scaffold branch
lopped

leafed twig fall
frittering down

brightening
rain patter
leaves

Lines

by Roberta Beach Jacobson

wrapped
in the colors of autumn
the river

The crow

by Katherine Burris

The crow begins its day early

beating the pheasant’s squawk for the harsh welcoming sound of morning.

It surveys its domain.

It knows exactly what field is being harvested

on the fertile marshes preserved by 17th century Acadian dykes in Old Barns.

The garbage stops on the streets of Bible Hill are routine: College, Murdoch, Vimy, Dorset

and the Aberdeen Street School playground offers no secrets to it;

roadkill can’t be planned but human rubbish can.

The seasons’ changing weather has little effect on the crow’s timetable,

but dusk does, signalling flying time

toward a night-time perch high in the towering eastern hemlocks,

for the crow ends its day early.

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

bright green grasshopper
plods along lakeshore
hoisted by an ant

Beach Shores

by Melissa Kelly

Jones beach is empty except for
bluish grey shells along the shore
white foam from rough waves
And the seagull searching
in deserted garage cans
for sandwich scraps

Autumn

by Rob Lowe

There is a slowness in English autumns,
A pause, an appearance, before the Fall;
Balanced withholding from sudden changes,
To slip without drama into the cold

 
Alchemical sleep of the ending year;
I smell the ways they stir on the verges –
Stubble, acorns, brambles blotched with ageing;
Webs of spiders, their coded announcements

Then the revolution: fields bare as bones;
Shock and awe of a blasting December
Consuming supply lines from November.
But that is a violence yet to become

Today is the last of summer memories,
To harking back to dry weeks in July;
Recalling fruit trees heavy with harvest,

Hung under a sky that scarcely darkened

 
August, September, times of preserving,
Their stillness invaded sinew and bone;
And everything seemed so secure then
Before the war came – wind, downpour and storm
 
Till then I exist in an in-between;
The sun inspects its columns of branches;
Footsteps of light leave imprints of shadows,
Where small lives scuttle to sheltered places
 
The rivers no longer complain “I thirst”,
But nor do they burst their banks with surfeit;
This is the moment all is forgiven,
Waiting, remembering - ordered to move?

 
That will not happen, not for a moment:
This season awaits the brown leaves applause;
Only then will it raise up the curtain –
A stage without light, a plot without cause.

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

Belted Kingfisher
perched high above the lake
preens blue-feathered crown

Untitled

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

not natural or ethereal
not composed of elements
from any needy origin story
this particular Bangkok morning
revels
in luminosity
 
with the first rising sun
ritual sacrifice
skyscraper phalanxes
those high priests of profit
who are really deluded prophets
cast beloved death-waking shadows
to confess monstrous alibis
deep listening heals

for the second blinding
white flash
of nirvanic rapture
beyond tenacious reality
the alter-ego mirror
of the collective unconscious
shatters
ornate sprigs of Thai gold
that cheerfully drown in restless pajamas
of heroic separation
from any earthly body
ordeal or recovery

August Evening, Garden Valley, Idaho

by Yash Seyedbagheri

Down Sunrise Drive
sky is pale blue, pink, and tangerine orange
shadows on the road
Ponderosa pines darkened
air cooling
crickets call faintly

Feeling the Burn, or That Which Feels Like a Bargain

by John Dorroh

Fires come in many flavors: Orange Crush
with its fluorescence fogging the bottle
from the inside out, inviting thirsty glass animals
to toss it down their parched gullets, its sugary matrix
of bedroom communities, chemicals that are hard
to pronounce; golden butternut squash with visual
connections to ash leaves on a Colorado mountain side
in mid-September; devil red, complete with obligatory
horns, its sinister smile that confuses all the normal people,
wrapping them in a hot satin cloak, pitchfork optional.

Yours is the Combination #4 with a medium drink
and fries, an upcharge for handmade onions rings
in a beer-batter crust. You know as well as me
that when you mess around with fire, you almost
always get burned.

Lines

by Douglas J. Lanzo

rain-soaked otters
slip down river banks
hunting for brook trout

Lines

by Ankit Anand

Mallard dabblers
Plunge the shallows
For freshwater shrimp

Silence

by Carol Farnsworth

After cricket’s chirps
before the sunrise
   silence

Pride of Place

by Ankit Anand

When the Eagle has had its fill
The Caracara move in
Black vultures bide their time
Turkey vultures keep their distance

Ecology

by Ankit Anand

Eucalyptus
Chirps
Till silence.

Waves

by Carol Farnsworth

ebb and flow
whitecapspushed by wind
erode Sleeping Bear dunes

Lines

by Susan N Aassahde

magpie crayon blimp
host cot
butterfly Gorgon spire

Whitefish Point

by Carol Farnsworth

a spit of land
waves tumble smooth stones
litter the sand

Ripples in a Pond

by Ahrend Torrey

          A subtle chain of countless rings         
          The next unto the farthest brings…
                  —    Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”
      
A pine nut falls into the dark, still pond—
a ripple-wave appears, then another

ripple-wave appears, then another

ripple-wave appears, then another

ripple-wave appears, then another


pine nut falls into the dark, still pond…

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

coachwhip snakes
    mating in the shade
       of the cedar tree

Summer Morning

by Patricia Hope

Dawn
On Watts Bar Lake
Geese honk
Water laps
Chickadees chatter
Swallows dive
Ducks quack
Mayflies amass
Egrets stand
Fog clears.

Lines

by Padmini Krishnan 

dawn drizzle
a Wood Pigeon’s
new tune

Garden Valley, Idaho, Morning

by Yash Seyedbagheri

Over Warm Springs Road,
sun falls
along with graying shadows
dead Ponderosa pine leans
sky light blue

Lines

by Mark Danowsky

two goldfinches alight
on a blush rose bush
across from the Wawa

The Dog's Growl

by Chris Butler

The human mind is a mile wide
but only six inches deep.
But when hunger growls,
the human mind is the first chew toy.

Blood Moon Near Sacramento

by Kaitlyn Jensesn

blood moon leaks
red in all
directions as
if an empty tavern
bathed in neon
light
on the road
to Winters

Exhale

by Patricia Hope

The jungle inhales
The jungle swells
The jungle prowls
The jungle slithers
The Jungle crawls
The jungle assassinates
The jungle scavenges
The jungle decays
The jungle persists
The jungle exhales.

Lines

by Philip C.  Kolin

cotton fields after
harvesting
a cloudless sky

Katydid

by Michael H. Brownstein

south wind
night falls
trees go to shadows and darkness
and then
a slew of boasting katydids
katy-did-katy-didn’t. katy-did-katy-didn’t.

On the Croton River near St. Augustine’s

by  Kathleen Williamson

Pink moon rises—
starlings in the oak
go silent

Mayfly Time

by Juliet Wilson

heat haze

swallows laze

across the lake
to catch mayfly

for the mayfly
iridescent in the sun
this languid day

is eternity

Summer

by Jeff Burt

Hummingbirds hover
while orange Chinese lanterns quake
spring yet continues

Lines

by Maria DePaul

Nautical twilight
Gulls cry echoes
Waves crest and break

Leopard in Balance

by Juliet Wilson

Amur leopard knows nothing of borders
or memorandums of understanding
and wouldn't recognise the names Putin or Xi.

She just follows herds of deer
through the mountains
stopping when she gets a chance
in a favourite resting place.

She surveys the world
secure in the spots that blur her
into the background.

She chooses solitude
until her cubs arrive
driving her to hang out at deer farms
where the pickings are easier.

Sunset at Bombo

by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

The cliffs of Bombo Headland
burn in a fuschia sunset
crags and ridges awash
in a medley
of violet and tangerine

in the depths of the Kiama sea
columns of igneous rock
stamp their ancient weight
as night thickens and settles
mottled with astral glitter -
a sprinkling of meteor showers

on the windswept eastern face
ghost crabs scuttle
abseiling down the basalt
unperturbed by the violence
of the thundering Pacific
lashing at the parapets
of prehistoric caverns.

Lines

by Catherine Saccone

Magnolia warbler
calling loud & bright
through white ash & hickory.

Twilight

by Bonnie Stanard

Behind the jassamine vines
the sun becomes chaffs of light.
Hoots and haws from noisy crows
rout a flock of robins
perched in the turkey oaks.

Blank Look #714

by Carl Mayfield

two ravens determined
juniper berries resistant

sky flashing blue
through the tree

On the Murrambidgee River

by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

Through sacred lands
the waters of the Murrambidgee
course in crimson sheets
thousand year old River Red Gums
mirrored in its depths

a wedge of magpie geese
spear through the skies
brown bitterns and freckled ducks
jostle with white-faced herons
wading among schools
of golden perch and bream

the primordial river glides
in a Dreamtime reverie
dusted with ludwigia blooms
and high up in the coolibah trees
the koalas’ eyes follow
the edge of the canoe
foaming lace through water.

Lines

by Carl Mayfield

  both sides
                  of a locked gate--
             cassin's vireo song

Jacaranda Tree, Los Angeles

by Alice Campbell Romano

after last night’s rain
jacaranda nearly bare
bark gray brown
grass a lavender stain

June Evening, Garden Valley, Idaho

by Yash Seyedbagheri

Ponderosa pines rise

in black shadows

cabins through the groves

lights faint and yellow

a moon 96% full, shines luminous 

in a pale blue sky with clouds colored pink and gray

Down Holiday Drive

lavender shadows glow in distant eastern hills

Midnight in Suriname

by Joshua Fagan

The silver lake leaps
Into a spotted frog’s mouth.
Ripples grow and fade.

Cicada

by Mary McCormack

red-eyed cicada
struggles up blades of grass--then flies,
suddenly graceful

Hummingbird

by Carol Casey

bringer of joy
ruby throated
in magenta lupines
wings invisible
now here, now there
now gone.

Lines From North Hutchinson Island

by Andrew Hutto

A bowl of roseate spoonbills stir when the
lagoon wakes shutter the mangrove forest.

Marsh rabbits and stone crabs
hide in sandy burrows.

Nettle

by Sarah-Jane Crowson

The hollow road’s all snarled with thorns,
fringed with stinging plants, the path
lost in hundred-eyed branches, where roots
are claws, knitting floors of speedwell, bluebell,
stitchwort, nettle, wren, dock, buttercup,
vipers bugloss, thrush, goosegrass, dock
nettle, dock, nettle.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

by Diane Sahms

As if every sound has its own shape, purpose.
His song, distilled. His black-hooded head
& brilliant semi-circle of red, with a leaky
valve extending down the middle of a white breast
& satin black wings with patches of white highlights
& this sacred space—his rambling song & sharp
rhythmic tweets—then in silence—there’s
emptiness—to enter, to become that silence,
ever changed