An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Tag: nature (Page 2 of 6)

House Plants Lament

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

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

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

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

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.

For the Love of Color: Ochre

Poetry by Linda Allison

Ochre is a wanderer
Embarking from deep yellow, it charts its way across the palette,
eventually landing somewhere in the vicinity of terracotta.
Ochre is the paprika in my soup and the cinnamon on my toast.
It is a farm-fresh egg, dark yolk dancing in the skillet,
and a hoo-doo rising from the floor of the Palo Duro Canyon.
It is the west Texas sky moments before the sun drops below the horizon.
My memories of Big Bend are all in ochre.

I am a study in ochre. Lids dusted, cheeks rubbed, warm golds and earthy red-browns,
Maybelline Autumn Copper and Almay Sunkissed Bronze
My hair and my sister’s hair, too, different ends of the spectrum: ginger and auburn
both now faded by the years

Isn’t it interesting that what ancient cave art remains was all drawn in ochre?


After forty years in finance, Linda Allison is enjoying a second life as a writer, photographer, and explorer. Her work has appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review, Pile Press, 2023 Utah’s Best Poetry and Prose Anthology, and others. Find her photography in Persimmon Tree and Burningword Literary Journal.

A Necessary Pause In Transmission

Poetry by Peter Devonald

Solace has a song for you, waiting, waiting, amongst the torrent.
If you don’t choose a day to relax your body will choose one for you.

Noise corrupts and absolute noise corrupts absolutely,
loud whirr of technology never stops, incessantly, ceaseless,

Instead sit in nature, listen, listen, to bird song and insects
reaffirm connections beautiful and obscure.

Take time to read, enjoy and endure your deeper self.
Be someone else, briefly, brilliant and captivating, memory.

Reconnect with friends, remember, remember, the times before
it all changed with vibrant neon, obsequious pleasures, glinting.

Recall the times before you weren’t connected to the miracles,
when simple pleasures were miracles enough to live exquisite.

You know what you really need, you always did, glimpsed
through endless noise and rain, you saw yourself, standing there.

The noise can wait a week without you, trust me, believe in me,
believe in silence, the seas, sagacious shift to embrace serenity.


Peter Devonald is winner of two Heart Of Heatons Awards, Waltham Forest Poetry and joint winner of FofHCS Poetry Award 2023. He has been published extensively and has two Best Of Net nominations. Poet in residence at HAUS-A-REST. Visit www.scriptfirst.com or https://www.facebook.com/pdevonald.

Blue Jay

Nonfiction by Liz deBeer

A blue jay landed in a planter by my window with something in its mouth. Not wanting to frighten it away, I froze, watching the indigo bird dancing around in a circle —tap, tap, tappity, tap —with what? A peanut?

Why the hell is a blue jay flying around with an unshelled peanut? Google knew: Apparently blue jays adore peanuts. Whole peanuts. In the shell, which they peck open, often gluttonously.

But this blue jay who landed in a planter by my window couldn’t crack the peanut shell. His head shook up and down, trying to puncture the peanut against the plastic planter’s edge: Tap, tap, tappity, tap again and again.

Finally, he turned to face me, peanut still intact. Looked me in the eye and spat out the nut before flying off.

I got up to inspect the planter by my window where the blue jay landed. Nestled among the roots of an almost dead pink petunia lay an unbroken cork-colored peanut hull.

Why the hell did the blue jay leave the nut, supposedly its favored treat? Was it merely a lazy blue jay who couldn’t penetrate the shell of a stubborn peanut?

Or was this a sign, this bird who landed in the planter by my window? A symbol of a guardian angel or my ancestors’ spirit with a message about longevity, fertility, or wealth?


Liz deBeer, an English teacher who resides in New Jersey, divides her time among many passions, including reading, beach walking, volunteering, and experimenting with different writing genres. Although Liz has published primarily in newspapers and teaching journals, she is working on writing YA novels and flash. Liz’s website is www.lizdebeerwriter.com.

This April

Poetry by Michael Carrino

Time can be a gentle quiz a dissonant tin drum
          Songbirds are silent

It continues to rain    Every village road is now
          a branch of the river

The past is a vintage red wine
          in some dark cellar

The future might only be
          black grapes

wasting on a vine as another
          ash-stained cloud

creates an illusion    Beyond
          the slate gray lake

every mountain must be burning


Michael Carrino was co-founder and poetry editor of SUNY Plattsburgh’s literary journal, Saranac Review. He has had nine books of poetry published, most recently, In No Hurry (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Natural Light (Kelsay Books, 2023), as well as individual poems in numerous journals and reviews.

Birthplace

Poetry by Alexander Etheridge

for W.S. Merwin

Out under clouds in the broad wheatfield
is a certain breed of silence
where only the perfectly hushed
give voice
Wind through the stalks
A sound of colors blending everywhere
in fine webs of shadow and light

After hours here you can start to sense
God’s breathing
like slow shifts in the clockwork
of ancient life
Then you may leave your body

as you lie in the delicate wheat
to return and find yourself
new once more
as you were long ago

your eyes wide
in the freshly formed world


Alexander Etheridge’s poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Museum of Americana, Welter Journal, The Cafe Review, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize. He is the author of God Said Fire (2023) and Snowfire and Home (Belle Point Press, 2024).

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