July 31

I’m here at the window again
watching the morning sky:
white clouds puffy as marshmallows
the girls roasted on sticks last night
over dimming coals.

Such a warm evening.  No wind.
Flat water.   Heat of the beach fire.
Their last night on the island,
tired from nights up late
in the tent.  They have packed
their small bags: headphones,
bug spray, sweatshirts, carefully
wrapped shells, perfect owl feather,
and the one or two agates
they’ll keep for a while on a dresser.

They want to take the low tide
walk today to Pt. Hammond:
around two rocky points, across the seam
of clay that flows, slippery, right down
to the water, past sliding sand cliffs,
a field of barnacles, onto sand flats
stretching to the point, smooth mound
of lichen-covered rock that flows
into the deepest blue. From the top
you can look down on a flurry of minnows
turning together like silver flake,
or sometimes see the dark wings
of a skate drifting in a cobalt abyss.
Purple starfish cling in the crevices
at the waterline, though mostly
they are gone now.

Walking barefoot along sand flats,
warm tide soaks your ankles
as the sea pulls back from the beach
uncovering it slowly,
like a lifetime of wonder.  I hope
they wake in time to go, to gather
summer’s freedom into them
for the long trip home.

A native of Seattle, Alicia Hokanson grew up exploring the beaches, forests, and islands of Puget Sound which inspired her deep attention to the natural world.

Her first book, Mapping the Distance, was selected by Carolyn Kizer for the King County Arts Commission publication prize. Brooding Heron Press published two chapbooks, Phosphorous and Insistent in the Skin. A new book, Perishable World, will be published by Pleasure Boat Studio press in spring 2021.

Featured image courtesy Wirestock

Not Yet

Tips of her hiking poles mark the ascent
to Tesuque Peak. Tiny holes pock the dirt
like inverted ant hills.  She pauses,
takes a deep breath, relaxes shoulders.

She scans the expanse of aspen,
dark emerald near the base
capped with jade green and pale yellow.
A red-tinned cabin roof at the highest
elevations ablaze with buttery-orange leaves.

A little early—not quite peak.

She removes her backpack, leans it against
a jutted trunk next to the trail, presses her back
against it, abandons her hat to the scrub grass.
Cool breezes fan sweat-trickled ringlets.
She closes her eyes, imagines she’s perched
on the highest branch. 

A flutter of motion beside her,
long tail with short wings, upper body
brown with white and gray streaked breast. 
A northern goshawk flits through virgin
forest in pursuit of a tree squirrel. 
A good sighting for a hiker in these woods.

Five years ago, she climbed this ridge.
No poles.  She needs them now for balance.
Worn calluses line her palms where she grasps.
She glances right and left; the foliage ripe
with autumn’s first blush.

Another hiker passes by, waves
and asks if she’s headed to the pass.
She shakes her head and says,
“I’m already there.”

Debbie Theiss (Lee’s Summit, MO) grew up in in the Midwest and finds inspiration for her poetry in the unfolding art of daily life and nature.  She has poems published in I-70 Review, Skinny Journal, Kansas Time and Place, Interpretations IV & V, Parks & Points & Poetry, Helen Literary Journal, River & South Review, Postcard Poems and Prose, Star 82 Review, Weaving the Terrain from Dos Gatos Press, and others.

Featured image by Jacob Lund

Nevada Ghost House

No plaque explains this home
the stone shell survives,
roof and doors long since
claimed by fire or indifference

A plank into the opening
mocks the Keep Out sign.
Sand grits underfoot
no artifact remains

No plate, bowl, scrap of cloth
recalls the family sheltered here
seekers of a better life
until the veins of silver waned

Only the wallpaper informs,
peeling rows of faded bluebells
and little girls in sunbonnets
tending dingy sheep

Strips of paper curl but still adhere
A thoughtless tug
and a century collapses
into a guilty souvenir

CAT Phillips has been writing poetry all her life. She is a retired teacher of English and has enjoyed publication in journals, both local and national. She twice won a contest for ekphrastic poems describing sculptures at Grounds for Sculpture in NJ. She convenes a group of poetry lovers at a local senior center.

Featured image by Fogarty Avenue “Wallpaper” BY CC 2.0

Hiking The Island

The forest becomes the beach.

The roots become the shore
high-bluffed, winds cast over
rolls of clover cover
over the crane

at rest
            in flight
at rest
            in flight
at rest again

in reeds.

Spark of lightning
crossways
               cut
through daylight.

The woods become the sand.

The roots become the sound
cairn-cornered, built before
building now near pebbles 

skipped
            and sunk
skipped
            and sunk
skipped across

waters where
blue meets blue.

Christina M. Rau is the author of the Elgin Award-winning sci-fi fem poetry collection, Liberating The Astronauts (Aqueduct Press) and the poetry chapbooks WakeBreatheMove (Finishing Line Press) and For The Girls, I (dancing girl press). Her poetry has appeared on gallery walls in The Ekphrastic Poster Show, on car magnets for The Living Poetry Project, and in various literary journals. Her prose has appeared on Book Riot and in Reader’s Digest. She was named Poet of the Year by Walt Whitman Birthplace Association and Poet In Residence for Oceanside Library NY 2020-1, and she won the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Creative Endeavors. In her non-writing life, when she’s not teaching yoga or offering reiki, she’s watching the Game Show Network.

Find her links on http://www.christinamrau.com

Featured image of Sunken Meadow State Park courtesy Christina M. Rau

Salmon Run

Rain falls harder as we ride out of the clouded city

on a lime green motorcycle with wide pannier thighs

I spread my weight over the sides (this isn't the day

we tip over, tumble down a highway), heavy trucks

passing not much faster but with more force, shaking

the bike on the wet. Halfway to the park with the beach

I spot a park with a bridge, a stream; I shout in the fishbowl

helmet “let's stop here for a minute” and the rider

says “maybe the rain will stop soon” and now we're hiking

up against the currents, picking one fork over the other,

but instead of the source my stream leads to the end

where two salmon shallowly rest. “oh no they're us” I point

and we laugh because we're sad about the fish. We turn back

riding on to the park that is all woods—night came quick

and I'm sodden. We stop. Set up red tent in a layer of water.

In the morning there's no more rain, we aren't washed away,

it's not the park with the beach but all the world is

old cedar and cool silence and moss.

Monica Wang has haiku in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational (Sakura Award 2018), Setouchi Matsuyama Haiku Contest (Honourable Mention 2020 & 2021), and HSA's Frogpond. Born in Taichung, Taiwan, she grew up in Taipei and Vancouver, Canada, and now lives in Amsterdam.

Featured image of Goldstream Provincial Park by Germán Poo-Caamaño “Misty gold stream” (filters applied) CC BY 2.0

Wilderness Hush

when the float plane’s buzz fades
deep silence settles

you can’t know what’s to come:
rain-beaded rye
sweeping circles in sand,
sweet blue-grey-berries
staining your palm,
the feel of wolf fur
caribou antler
wolverine bone,
and pastel sheen of
birch bark scrolls

you haven’t met the devoted swans
tender loons
dancing cranes,
been rattled by their calls,
or listened in the burn
while charred trees whisper
about the pleasure of flame

the deep moose tracks
studded by wind-blown cones
aren’t marred by your gait yet,
and the thick moss underfoot
hasn’t cradled your bones
through the pale dark

that’s all ahead
after this hushed pause

Erin Robertson was raised by Walnut Creek, Lake Erie, Morse Mountain, and South Jersey’s salt marshes.  She teaches outdoor nature writing classes for children in Louisville, Colorado (www.wildwriters.org), and has been honored with residencies through the Voices of the Wilderness and Boulder County Open Space Artist-in-Residence programs.  Find her poetry in the North American Review, Poet Lore, SageGreenJournal.org, and elsewhere.  www.erinrobertson.org, www.robertsonrambles.com

Featured image by Jason Ahrns "Koyukuk River” CC BY 2.0

A Fox on the Patio

There was a fox on the patio this morning.
Her coat proud orange bursting, the tip
of the tail black, as if
she dipped it in paint.

She slipped through the bars, mama,
my daughter said, incredulous
that a creature so full might
skinny herself to escape.

She stood at the window, sparkly
headband, mismatched socks, sleeves
unable to keep up
with her yearning arms, face
unmasked, raw
in its awe of a world

where a fox can visit
in the midst of buttered toast
and the slow rise
of the sun, fading sky pink
to grey to blue, so blue.

She ran up the stairs
to tell daddy. I placed 
a hand against the cold pane,
and wondered when
she will begin to bend 
herself between bars
to escape my grasp.

Eve Kagan is a trauma-informed therapist, educator, and theatre-artist. Her poetry is forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Amethyst Review; her personal essays and short stories have been published in various journals and anthologies, including HuffPost, Role Reboot, Mothering through the Darkness, and Dark City Lights. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Featured image by Rob Lee “Sunny Fox” (crop, filters applied) CC BY 2.0

Walking Along Bradford Beach

The diggers are there, children with shovels
and pails, waders too in the chill water,
and dogs, great leaping dogs who love
waves and sticks. There is music, practitioners
of yoga, and those like me who walk the wrack line
in silence looking for what gleams and glitters
amid pebbles, dried grass, and
pieces of drift wood.

We know each other, seldom talk, give a wave
from afar and move on, solitary searchers
honoring what the lake, nature's tumbler, left for us
to find, surfaces and edges frosted, smoothed
by currents and storms and time,
encouraging

me to create stories for the sea glass I find,
pieces of green and amber glass, heavy crockery
and dishware, fragments with flowers,
Nordic designs, stylized patterns making me think
of those who I will never know,
those making and using the whole of what
I now find in pieces,

memory-holders I plan to place along the windowsill
where the sun will find them
and make them glow.

Kathleen Phillips lives in an senior living apartment in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She loves living in the city and exploring the parks nearby. This is "a city built on water" . . . Lake Michigan is two blocks away and there are rivers close by. During this time of pandemic and isolation, walks on the beaches and along the river banks have kept her energized. Now 85 and writing as much as ever, she finds each season and each location offers new prompts for poetry . . . and pays attention to as many as she can!

Featured image by Jenny Spadafora “findings” CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Alexandra Palace Pond

My grandmother by Alexandra Palace pond,
Her hair like steel wool blown underneath the sky of copper.
Ducks picked their nits as the wind turned the lake’s face white
Till it wrinkled and shone in the glower –

Not a word of that time remains
Only the ducks and the wind and the water
And my mother’s mother wherever she is
Now remains where the duck’s wings may flutter.

Not a sound, not a trace of her mind
But the water still glitters, to shatter.

Atar Hadari’s “Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of H. N. Bialik” (Syracuse University Press) was a finalist for the American Literary Translators’ Association Award, his own “Rembrandt’s Bible” published by Indigo Dreams. His Pen Translates award winning “Lives of the Dead: Collected Poems of Hanoch Levin” is out now from Arc Publications.

Featured image: The Boathouse Alexandra Park [filters applied] cc-by-sa/2.0 by Peter Hyde

god. 1

Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park, Dania Beach, FL

take this day which
even if i showed you a photo
you wouldn’t believe

is 10am on tuesday
a lone sandpiper weaves through
rows of royal terns who look like

very serious bald men
all watch the water
they too understand morning

as luster in their bones
sargassum piles at the ocean’s lip
the biggest gull scans for silver fish

bits of tossed-out bait carried inland
we squint banner planes gulping overhead
i say we and mean it say we

but mean balanced eastwind
not enough to make us shiver
and the woman heeling sand

and the dolphin pod two miles out
the coconut husk the hardened coral
the couple smoking on a leopard print blanket

Brendan Walsh has lived and taught in South Korea, Laos, and South Florida. His work appears in Rattle, Glass Poetry, Indianapolis Review, American Literary Review, and other journals. He is the winner of America Magazine's 2020 Foley Poetry Prize, and the author of five books, including Go (Aldrich Press), Buddha vs. Bonobo (Sutra Press), and fort lauderdale (Grey Book Press). He’s online at www.brendanwalshpoetry.com.

Featured image of Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park courtesy ksblack99

Waiting for the Moon

Uluru, previously known as Ayers Rock, is a 348-meter high red rock monolith in Central Australia, in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

After the miracle of Uluru
turning to fire with the setting sun,
silence stretches into stillness.

In the diamante dark
the insistent southerly
holds its breath

until a faint blush
begins to glow
in the curve atop the Rock.

The moon in fullness spills an ardent light,
casting long shadows
across time.

Dorothy Swoope is published widely in print and online. Her publications include a poetry chapbook, The Touch of a Word and her childhood memoir, Wait ‘til Your Father Gets Home!. She resides on the South Coast of New South Wales. When not weaving words with nature, she is weaving upcycled materials.

Featured image courtesy Dorothy Swoope

escapee

dry pod releases
seeds to air,
one by one,
until each particle

dissolves. now,
brown and gaunt,

it waits to fall.
I understand the
urge to remain:

a miracle
to quiver
in a windstorm,

but not crumble
into pieces.

supernatural act,
repeated each day
while nobody
watches: still,

I glance up
from my desk
just as the pod

breaks from its
stem and soars
towards deliverance.

sky opens
its insatiable mouth.

Leah Mueller is an indie writer and spoken word performer from Bisbee, Arizona. Her most recent books, Misguided Behavior, Tales of Poor Life Choices (Czykmate Press), Death and Heartbreak (Weasel Press), and Cocktails at Denny's (Alien Buddha) were released in 2019. Leah’s work appears in Midway Journal, Citron Review, The Spectacle, Miracle Monocle, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere. Check out her website at www.leahmueller.org.

Featured image “Dry Seed Pods” by wundoroo / (rotation, filters applied) CC BY 2.0

Theory of Mind

We hustled in the cold wind, 
the sun too blinding to let us look 
and nothing to see but seagulls 
and some stout geese settled 
in the icy bay. Unsteady 
on the shifting sands and shells 
we thundered on, till we saw

a silver fish flop and flop, 
trapped, as a gull pecked his head. 
You scooped the distraught fish up 
and threw: he flew far out and 
dropped and seemed to fly again,
he swam so fast, his wake 
a swift snake of water sliding. 

What delight to see him go! 
He’ll die soon, you said. The gull 
pecked out the mackerel’s eye. 
Maybe to distract ourselves, 
we reminisced. We used to 
eat them off the bone, you said.
I like them canned, I answered, 

then thought of mackerel clouds—
puffy scales coalescing,
covering the sun—and now 
this half-blind fish, burdened 
with our gift of time, finning 
his way through the green-black cold.

Ruth Hoberman has spent the last couple of years living in New Haven, Connecticut to be near her daughter and her daughter's family. Having grown up in New York City, she loves the coastal beaches that border Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. Her poems and essays have been published in various journals, including Calyx, Rhino, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares (forthcoming).

Featured image of Silver Sands State Park courtesy Derek Wright.

Teddy Bear Kingdom

Hiking in solitary through desert mountains,
I enter a stand of human-sized teddy bear cactus,
clustering around me with deceptively plush stems
their arms outstretched, cloaked with dense silvery spines.
I find solace here, wishing I could touch them
to draw upon their vital strength
and know that life endures.

But their barbed claws detach readily,
and cling to flesh with fierce persistence.
They attach to any passing animal,
moving and growing wherever
conditions favor their survival,
much as this new virus spikes human cells,
hitching a ride on droplets,
flaring through our shared spaces,
tearing apart the bonds of humanity.

I tread gingerly through this new social desert,
ever mindful of invisible claws.
Desert plants we have become,
spaced wide apart,
bare soil in between.

Gene Twaronite is a Tucson poet, essayist, and children’s fiction writer. His first poetry collection Trash Picker on Mars (Kelsay Books) was the winner of the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Arizona poetry. Other poetry collections include The Museum of Unwearable Shoes and What the Gargoyle Sees. Follow more of Gene’s writing at his website: thetwaronitezone.com.

Featured image courtesy Gene Twaronite

The Matterhorn Ascent, Yosemite National Park, July 27, 1987

for Sean O'Grady 

                        who dislikes dedications a lot 

When David and I made the top 
                                    of the Matterhorn 
            you were already there-- 

            the only man I ever saw charge 
up the side of a mountain. 

              “Isn’t this great?” you yelled 
and we all laughed, took pictures, 
                                    found the register 
            and recorded our feat.   

            Not a minute later 
a white butterfly fluttered up 
                        the side we’d just scaled 
and circled twice around your head 

            but you were the last to see it 
turning always so it was behind your head 
                        until finally there it was 
            floating back down the other side.   

            Then we just looked around. 

I remember reading what the head monk 
                        told Snyder years ago: 
“You only climb a mountain 
                        to see what’s around; 
only a fool wants to stay up there.”   

                        But I can see 
no one here is in a particular hurry 
            to start our long descent. 

Eric Paul Shaffer is author of seven books of poetry, including Even Further West; A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon; Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen; and Portable Planet. More than 500 of his poems are published in America and around the world. Shaffer received Hawai‘i’s 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature, 2006 and 2019 Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Awards, and 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry. Shaffer teaches at Honolulu Community College.

Featured image Matterhorn Peak , by Jeff P CC BY 2.0

Wild Roses

Even in this rain,
the forest is on fire
with their bright faces.
Yellow at center a match
to pink flames, now
licking at my doubts, promising
to burn them downstream,
small ashes to mix with black earth
and the lightening sea.

Marybeth Holleman is author of The Heart of the Sound and Among Wolves, and co-editor of Crosscurrents North, among others. Her poetry collection, tender gravity, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Pushcart-prize nominee and finalist for the Siskiyou Prize, she’s published in venues including Orion, Christian Science Monitor, Sierra, Deep Wild Journal, Literary Mama, ISLE/OUP, North American Review, AQR, zoomorphic, Minding Nature, The Guardian, The Future of Nature, and on NPR. Raised in North Carolina’s Smokies, Marybeth transplanted to Alaska's Chugach Mountains after falling head over heels for Prince William Sound just two years before the Exxon Valdez oil spill. www.marybethholleman.com

Featured image courtesy Marybeth Holleman

The Hike to Emerald Lake

Plucking the peak’s granite from Tyndall’s gorge,
the glacier churns off the face like a hatchet
across pine bark. We are trailblazing the shores of
alpine lakes, bouldering with side steps, slicked
with cold water on our sneakers. Simple joy, 
wonder doesn’t tire. Light on the underside of 
lily pads, in cracks of rotting driftwood we lift,
creek-stomping for mayflies along the Nymph.
Our eyes imagine a view from the wall, over 
Hallett’s crags; ears nipped by the drag of winds
across Dream Lake. We’re waking to an afternoon
in June, astonished at the snowballs in our hands. 
We fling them sunward, the glare and tint breaking
like firecrackers, moments that explode in beauty
and we may never get back.

Matthew Miller teaches social studies, swings tennis rackets, and writes poetry - all hoping to create home. He and his wife live beside a dilapidating orchard in Indiana, where he tries to shape dead trees into playhouses for his four boys. His poetry has been featured in Whale Road Review, River Mouth Review, Club Plum Journal and Ekstasis Magazine.

Featured image Emerald Lake by Jason Barnes CC / BY 2.0

In the Red Beginning

After the thunder rumbled away
the rainbow called us out
from under the red rock overhang.

We stood, small, between long flat walls
of ochre sandstone rising on either side
like ruins in the Valley of the Kings.

On the slickrock canyon floor, barely wet,
were pockets of red sand, swept into crevices
as if by some primal tide, now pebbled by raindrops.

New was the sharp green scent of sage
that follows rain—and the gurgle
of a small stream somewhere. 

There it was, up on the right, a tiny rivulet
spilling over a flat rock into a pool
and going nowhere. But then

more runoff from a small side canyon
collected itself, splashed down
into the tiny pool, spilled over

and began its downhill trip.
The rivulet sprinted forward
by turns lapping and leaping

split over a chunk of rock, raced
up a short slight incline and over
a new stone edge onto our canyon floor

heading down by several paths
shining the ancient slickrock
on the way to its Pacific destiny.

We watched the traveling crest
bound oceanward--watched
as if present at the creation of the world.

Mary Kay Schoen’s verse has appeared in America Magazine; Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press), an anthology of Southwestern poetry; and several online poetry journals. For gainful employment she has taught high school in Ghana and preschool in Virginia and published numerous feature articles in the Washington Post and health and education periodicals.

Featured image: Butler Wash Bridge by U.S. Geological Survey CC BY 2.0

El Capitan

At the base of the sky-bound
face of granite, one child searches
intuitively for grooved handholds
while the other leaps weightlessly
atop boulders dropped from its mouth.

Where limb meets rock: the ignition
of memory, the sagas of smoke.

Matthew J. Andrews is a private investigator and writer whose poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Orange Blossom Review, Funicular Magazine, and EcoTheo Review, among others. His debut chapbook, I Close My Eyes and I Almost Remember, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He can be contacted at matthewjandrews.com

Featured image courtesy Matthew J. Andrews

Skipping Stones on Lake Champlain

“Son, do you know how love should be begun?” The boy sat small
and listening and still. Slowly he shook his head. The old man leaned
closer and whispered: “A tree. A rock. A cloud.”

—Carson McCullers

He squats on blue-gray stones, arms
a bridge linking knees in unaware prayer.
His dog’s wet-toffee face sniffs his hope
while unnamed birds in a tree shift
a thousand leaves to chaos. He stands,
indulges in boyhood. There’s the pant
of his dog’s lullaby. A mother and father’s
voice in his head: he chooses 
a flat round rock. Moving his wrist, he flicks
weight and all that’s at stake
across the water, trying
to mimic a heartbeat.

Marjorie Thomsen loves teaching others how to play with words and live more poetically in the world. She is the author of “Pretty Things Please” (Turning Point, 2016). Two poems from this collection were read on The Writer’s Almanac. One of Marjorie’s poems about hiking in a dress and high heels was made into a short animated film. She has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the recipient of poetry awards from the University of Iowa School of Social Work, Poetica Magazine, and others. Publications include Pangyrus, Parks and Points, Rattle, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. Marjorie has been a Poet in Residence in schools throughout New England. She is a psychotherapist and instructor at Boston University’s School of Social Work.