Tag: nature (Page 1 of 5)

Jam Cakes

15 December 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Lo Riddell

Here comes nature’s peace
offering: pale landscapes

with feather-brush forests
licking the first snowflakes

straight from the sky.
Invisible sun shines through

shadow-bellied clouds, turning
blue skies white with promise

of more snow. My grandmother
alchemizes the last of her summer

blackberries into cakes that fit
kindly in my open hands.

Dusk comes early once again,
creeping in through kitchen windows

to steal a piece of fresh-baked bread
from the stovetop. The holly berries

light up the roadside like string lights
for families of deer trotting by.

At last, December takes her stage
and exhales the passing year.

Lo Riddell is a lesbian writer from southern Ohio, currently based in New England. She received her BFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University in 2022, and now spends her free time writing poetry, prose, and essays on pop culture. You can find her on Instagram at @vintagelouisa.

photography of maple trees — Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

One Long Song

27 November 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Laura DeHart Young

It played in the key of reed –
clarinet, oboe, and sax –
notes raspy but clear.
They rose into an instrumental aria
unsung and unfinished –
yet the breathy chords
still hit, pure and insistent,
an orchestral surge cresting
on a wind that blew from the north.

Restless lake water,
chopping and spilling onto sandy rock –
that’s where the
final trailing notes were bound
at the end of a long autumn song.

Flung across the newly chilled shores
like skipping stones,
the equinoctial tune landed in my lap.
I caught it and put it in your mouth.
You hummed,
holding my arms around your waist.
A pileated kept time on a nearby tree –
tapping a backbeat on the offbeat.
Leaves scattered
in tune with autumn’s exhale,
color long gone – brittle in death.
They rustled and twisted with percussion,
merengue style,
floating and dipping in kinetic flurries.

One by one the notes blew into us.
We plucked them out of the air
with our fingertips,
swallowing them whole –
swaying and rocking
until I rolled you in that bed
of musical leaf debris
between boat docks
stacked and stowed.
You stopped humming.
I stopped listening,
the autumn timbre fading
into winter’s cymballistic brass.

Laura DeHart Young graduated with a degree in English and enjoys a career in the communications field. She is currently pursuing poetry writing. Laura is the author of seven novels published by Bella Books Inc. She has also written book reviews for Lambda Book Review in Washington, D.C.

brown wooden bench beside tree near river — Photo by Peter Frese on Pexels.com

On the Deck

15 November 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Theresa Wyatt

in my cushy chair it is the end of summer.
The community noise of lawn mowers moves chipmunks
underground for hours & hummingbirds toward the lake.
Grass outside the gate is yellow from drought.

Parallel thoughts generate questions – will it be cool enough
to sleep with the windows open – will roaming creatures
slow the spices’ heart rates – will the apple crop yield both
sweet & tart, and did the Farmer’s Almanac discern
a mild winter? Dry leaves stand ready to turn.

When winter comes,
I’ll look out at roped chairs without cushions,
the covered air conditioner will be soundless, lawn mowers
will hibernate. Apple pies and sauce will be stacked neatly
in the freezer – pesto will be tightly sealed.

When it comes, I’ll go out on the glistening deck
frosted with crystals – cardinals will bear witness
while Tai Chi arms caress the wind breathing
through the fence – all of us & everything
finding new rhythms in between the white.

Theresa Wyatt is the author of The Beautiful Transport, a Moonstone Press 2022 chapbook finalist, and Hurled Into Gettysburg (BlazeVox Books, 2018). Her work has also appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, Spillway, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Healing Muse. A retired educator, Theresa resides near Buffalo close to Lake Erie.

Injury Lessons

1 November 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Nicole Farmer

The words tendinitis & torn meniscus get thrown
around doctors’ offices & at home leaving

me to come to terms with immobility & mandatory
rest, while my body revolts, my mind riots

& old age cackles in my ear all the fears
of dependency – send my mind reeling in doom,

despair, confined to a chair or couch
to slowly atrophy & wither away to obscurity.

Then just this morning the trees spoke to me –
underground roots rough raspy voice saying

hold tight, stand still & breathe in the day
be like us and sway your trunk/torso

do what you can to reach your limbs/arms up
move with the gentle wind.

Oh yes, there will be chair yoga & stationary
bikes in your future, but right now

slow down, stop racing & look around
delight in the early yellow light & the drying leaves.

August is evaporating so enjoy these last days
of simmering summer swelter.

So, I moved my reading chair to the deck & embraced
a long-awaited repose in the shade of the old maple.

Nicole Farmer (she/her) has published Wet Underbelly Wind (Finishing Line Press 2022) and Honest Sonnets (Kelsay Books 2023). Her poems have been published in Wisconsin Review, Suisun Valley Review, Apricity, Wild Roof Journal, Poetry South, Drunk Monkeys, Sad Girls Club, and many other journals. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

willow leaves touching lake — Photo by vanesa ayala on Pexels.com

In My Father’s Backyard

7 October 2024 / Editor

Poetry by David Athey

There is a weeping willow
in sunrise

wild with ravens
singing in the crown,

a raucous song, a tantrum
of cries; and there is

a hint of a wind
like a gentling hand

brushing branches away
like hair from sorrow;

and there is silence
in the crown when the ravens hush

and the willow begins—and here
is my father—to laugh.

David Athey‘s poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Iowa Review, Poet Lore, California Quarterly, Seattle Review, and the Wallace Stevens Journal. Athey lives in South Florida on a small lake with large iguanas. His books, including the Florida spoof, Iggy in Paradise, are available at Amazon.

green potted plant beside window — Photo by Gilberto Olimpio on Pexels.com

House Plants Lament

1 September 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Peter A. Witt

Potted I sit on the windowsill,
like a canvas painted with sunlight,
weaving patterns on my outstretched leaves,
it’s a good life, but I envy the vibrant
garden that grows outside, where
plants hear the twilling of house finches,
the buzzing of honey bees, and feel the cool
of early spring breezes, as arrowheads
of Sandhill Cranes migrate north
from their Texas winter homes.

Once my keeper carried my potted home
out to the patio on a rain-clouded day
where a gentle caress from nature’s hand
bathed the soil around my roots.

I drew the pure water into my stems,
it was refreshing after my usual diet
of salt-filled, chlorinated water drawn
from the kitchen tap. Alas, my roots
were never bathed this way again.

My owner thinks I’m happy; she sees
no bugs, no rot of my roots or mold,
no diseases, but she does not know
I feel like a prisoner in a gilded cage;
she thinks of me as nothing more
than a potted house plant with no
ambition to be something more.

Peter A. Witt is a poet, family history writer, active birder and photographer. Peter retired in 2015 from a 43-year university teaching and research career. He lives with his wife in Texas.

Skipping

26 August 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Carolyn Jabs

The woman with the stethoscope
asks matter-of-factly,
“Has anyone mentioned
the pause in your heartbeat?”
I’m not one to worry,
but that night, in bed, I hold
my own hand and find the pulse.
No question, my heart
has taken up skipping.

All night I have uneasy dreams.
My heart pursues its syncopated ways,
as if to say don’t count on me,
things are not as certain as they seem.
At dawn I follow my heart’s direction—
skip over what was written
on the day’s agenda,
pause to listen to birds,
gossiping as the day breaks.

All morning my heart and I
are in cahoots. It sprints for a minute,
then hesitates like a toddler
seeing a dandelion for the first time.
I follow its lead. After a lifetime
of inattention, I want to know why
my heart hesitates, want to register
the moment it shakes off doubt
and decides we’ll live a little longer.

In her professional life, Carolyn Jabs contributed essays and articles to many publications including The New York Times, Newsweek, Working Mother, Self and Family PC. She is author of The Heirloom Gardener and co-author of Cooperative Wisdom, an award-winning book about an innovative approach to conflict resolution.

Notes We Cannot See

1 July 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Mary Baca Haque

today was flawed but not forever–
for when the morrow rises, the will
of first light reflects off leafy trees
halfway healing the disarray, ceasing

yesterday’s melancholy, sailing
on silver seeds of the aged lion’s tooth
dissipating in the new air

to the tune of the devoted cardinal
at first light playing advantageously
in backgrounds

carrying on winds
in notes we cannot see, but feel
the chorus in the promise of a new day

with new breath
under yellow shades with azureous skies.

Mary Baca Haque prefers to capture the essence of the natural world, hence her forthcoming publication, Painting the Sky with Love (2024-Macmillan). Her poetry can be found in Wild Roof Journal, Cosmic Daffodils, Amethyst Review, Closed Eye Open, and Seraphic Review (2023 and forthcoming in 2024). She resides in Chicago, Illinois.

The Birdhouse

1 June 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Christine Andersen

for the sparrows

In retirement,
my partner built a birdhouse from cedar
to withstand the New England winters.
Twelve inches high,
four by four at the base,
hinged roof for cleaning.
The entrance hole measured 1¼ inches
seven inches above the floor—
no perch for crows or magpies
to devour eggs or hatchlings.

He hung the birdhouse on a giant oak
facing east from prevailing winds
to be bathed in sun on brisk mornings,
shaded in the afternoons.
The wood was left unpainted to blend
into the October landscape.
He had thought of everything
in the way a man researches,
makes detailed lists, follows specifications.

The wait for a pair of sparrows began.

Today I lift the roof
and clean out an abandoned nest
for new mates to move in.
My partner has been dead
more than a year now.
He never saw the first sparrows
or watched their young fly free—
the one thing he didn’t plan for.
The one thing we never saw coming.

I close the top
and search the empty sky.
New sparrows will arrive in due time,
become part of my love story.

Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who now has the time to hike in the Connecticut woods with her three dogs, pen and pad in pocket. Publications include Comstock, Awakenings, Evening Street and Gyroscope Reviews, Slab, and Glimpse, among others. She won the 2024 American Writers Review Poetry Contest.

Logging the Land

1 June 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Nancy Kay Peterson

The 40-acre coulee was
mostly woody slopes
and for the health of
the younger trees
had to be logged,
just like carrots
and beets have to be
thinned to thrive.

She hated even thinning
killing vegetables,
and crashing tree falls
broke her heart.
She hated the buzzing
crack of breaking timber
branches and stumps piling up
ruts trucks were making.

But ruts would fill in
and become trails
she could hike to explore
for wildflowers and ginseng.
And decaying trunks
would support fungi, mushrooms
and prized morels.

So she steeled herself
to the pillaging of the forest
tried not to think like a tree
tried to fall gracefully
into acceptance.

Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry has appeared in The Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, Last Stanza, The RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticket, and Tipton Poetry Journal. She co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine (2004-2009) and has authored two chapbooks: Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021). Visit www.nancykaypeterson.com.