Tag: nature (Page 1 of 7)

Shutters

12 February 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Michael David Roberts

All but children and birds care
to live their lives with an end game.

We adults prefer to walk narrow paths
usually leading to destinations.

But something always happens—
a major distraction in which

the locks are changed or the knobs
don’t turn, even just a little bit, all

unexpectedly, nothing predictable,
as it should be. And you don’t even know

if you are locked in or out. Sometimes
it is hard to truly be adult about this.

Often in the mornings, when
the dew has soaked the grass

and all the houses have their windows
shuttered, I can hear birds, all in synch,

like a room full of children who
have just discovered a small surprise.

Michael David Roberts is a retired community college professor who currently lives in Tumwater, Washington and spends much of his time walking through nearby forests. He has been published in The Comstock Review, Chelsea, Slipstream, Versedaily.com, and others. His book, The Particulars of Being, was published in 2004.

The Poet and the Pebble-Raker

3 February 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Stephen Cribari

White clouds, shredded
Like wool from sheep combed through thorn and gorse

I will sit here, under an endless sky
Until I am covered with falling in springtime snow
Of haw-blossom blown by the wind, until I am
White like the Cornwall hedgerow landscape, white
Like the beginning of time is white with first sunlight
Tumbling on the lilac and the rose

Then I will rise
And like the tide rake pebbles along the shore

Stephen Cribari resides in Minneapolis. His recent poetry appears in Writings from the Tyrrhenian Coast of Calabria (Rubbettino; English and Italian by Editors Margherita Ganeri and Maria Mazziotti Gillan); Voices Unbound; Freshwater Literary Journal; the Paterson Literary Review. The Grammar Lesson was featured in the January 14, 2025, edition of Passager’s podcast Burning Bright.

The Blizzard

1 February 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Sheryl Slocum

hurls itself
at the storm door
bodies
of snowflakes
shatter

my shuddering porchlight
illuminates
a cacophony
of chipped sparks
glints of rainbow
that whirl back
into seething dark

I sense
a being that waits
just outside
the feeble light

too lovely
and terrible
for flesh
to bear

Sheryl Slocum, a retired English language teacher, lives in West Allis, Wisconsin. Her poetry appears in numerous literary publications, and her book, Leaving Lumberton, was published by Wipf and Stock in 2022. Sheryl is a member of the Hartford Avenue Poets and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.

Enjambment

1 February 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Clarence Allan Ebert

True Japanese Maple saplings
sprout from innocent seeds of love
wine-red leaves that whisper their purpose
to the wind each new day
when passers-by on a stroll
in sunshine or shade all the same
delight themselves to wander
through a neighborhood unlike yesterday’s.

My poems as well derive a lyric or two
from the whisper of yesterday’s Delight
or Sarcasm all the same on a stroll
gathering one brief then longer verse
undisturbed until voices blow clearer
my purpose in a wind against my brow,
each new thought chooses not to wander,
the stanza’s wing is no longer innocent
breaks off in a twist, unlike Shakespeare’s pentameter.

Clarence Allan Ebert first published a poem in 1977. He writes what falls on his head and revises and revises and hopes one day he might be as good at this craft. He resumed his chair in the parlor to write poetry again during COVID.

How the Poems Land

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

We share the wind in this early morning hour,
the new leaves of the Japanese Maple, crimson,
skin-soft, fibrillate in genial breeze, fluctuate
in tandem with fish kite, murmuring wind chime,

and to the south, a poet friend meanders her rocky
shore, her dogs advance and retreat, loop to follow
each new scent revealed by tide and temperature,
while she gathers words among popweed, shell

debris. Poetry exists in breath, without formula.
Its thoughts gather like sea foam, words emerge
with the surface and bob of harbor seal’s head,
its eyes scanning shoreline, until poetic lines

land in a whisper-whoosh of baby waves shuffling
into the space between. The spring has been a dark
October, rain repeated by rain, yet the leaves green,
red-breasted robins frolic, the poems need writing.

Kersten Christianson derives inspiration from wild, wanderings, and road trips. Her newest poetry collection, The Ordering of Stars, will publish with Sheila-Na-Gig in fall 2025. Kersten lives in Sitka, Alaska. She eyeballs tides, shops Old Harbor Books, and hoards smooth ink pens.

The River God’s Daughter

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Angela Patten

Here I am on the river again
gliding my kayak past a row of turtles

their shells gleaming in the sun
like freshly washed dinner plates.

I turn to see a muskrat’s muzzle
parting the water like a butterknife.

Around a bend a heron stands
knee-deep in weeds and water

like my father in black rubber
boots fishing on the River Boyne.

Although he loved rivers and streams,
he hated the sea with equal fervor

distrusting its relentless waves
its monotonous unremitting motion.

But back to the heron and the mystery
of that bony beak, that frozen pose

that alien cranium with its opaque eye
the shriek and fluster of its wings

as it takes off creaking into the air
like an early flying machine.

Unlike my father, I loved the sea
and the cold consecration of salt water.

But now I am a convert to the river
that flows through marsh and mudflat

town and village, state and country
the wayward weather its only god.

Angela Patten is an award-winning Irish poet, author of five poetry collections and a prose memoir. Her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the U.S. and abroad. A native of Dublin, Ireland, she is a Senior Lecturer Emerita in English at the University of Vermont. Read more at www.carraigbinn.com.

May We Still Sing?

26 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Anne Makeever

Winter blows in late, its inevitability until now unsure. What relief
to watch a pristine obliteration of snow nearly bury the summer chairs
and limn the bare oaks that frame the cold cove.

I want to sigh over the softness, the muffling depth that quiets the day,
to feast on the fineness of black and white that turns O so heartbreakingly,
lavishly purple at dusk. Look, my eyes say, here’s beauty. I want to forget

that life is erasing. Bees, darkness, glaciers, monarchs can’t carry our weight.
The seasons shift, from white to green to orange, each a gift undeserved,
a psalm to savor.

Yes, my mother’s face was beautiful when she died, but the rupture remains.
Consolation comes in what will continue, in the scab that forms at the edge
of the tear then gives over to eventual scar.

Anne Makeever’s work appears in the Eliot Review, Plant Human Quarterly, RavensPerch, and River Styx. She holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she also taught poetry and essay writing. She lives in Brunswick, Maine, with her partner and exuberant dog.

Pulse

11 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Richard Levine

One morning alone, light came
and I understood everything
in the world belonged to itself.

The sky surrounded a heron,
and from a green curve in the creek
it rose on the broad majesty

of its loneliness and wings.
The noiseless blue paddling
of my pulse, timed it out of sight.

Above me, wind stirred trees
… is it any wonder stringed
instruments sing so sweetly?

Richard Levine, an Advisory Editor of BigCityLit.com, is author of the forthcoming Taming of the Hour: An Almanac with Marginalia from Fernwood Press.

Photo by Vijayalakshmi Nidugondi on Unsplash

Voices

1 September 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Marsha Howland

A solo artist sings in the
woods close by. Four notes,
a pause, then two and six
(three times). For several
minutes this bird loudly
performs. Then comes a
soft echo from deeper in
the woods. They sing a
duet, back and forth, his
voice growing more faint
each time he flies further
into the thickening trees.
By stages, song and
response move closer and
closer, until it almost seems
there is one voice, one song,
one small triumph in the
eternal progressions of
life. The nature of things:
You find your voice and, if
blessed, find another.

Marsha Howland‘s poems have been published in The Moon issue of The Black and White series, the American Journal of Nursing, and Waves (AROHO). As a senior at Wellesley, Marsha won the college’s Academy of American Poets prize. She had the privilege of studying with poets David Ferry and Frank Bidart.

Tree Song: Redwood

1 August 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Joanne Harris Allred

This giant has held its yogi-gaze
for over three-thousand years.
A spiral gash scores the two-foot thick

bark where lightning blazed
through the feathered tiers.
One would need five yard-sticks

to measure its memory’s ring-span,
its top too tall to be seen
from the base where one must stand

humbled. This monolith of deep green
silence began as a dark pinhead, coded
magnificence in profound concentration.

Then, like a black hole, the seed exploded
into a galaxy. For centuries its attention
has stayed one-pointed, each bough

and twig focused right here, right now.

Joanne Harris Allred has three full length poetry collections: Particulate (Bear Star Press, 2002), The Evolutionary Purpose of Heartbreak (Turning Point, 2013), and Outside Paradise (Word Poetry, 2024). She taught at California State University, Chico for many years and lives in northern California.