Low Season

My appetite is larger than
fish bones and potato peels. 

I pull wisps of clouds down
for eating. I clean my teeth

with birchwood, pick forests clean. 
All fables begin with ache, end 

with hide unzipped. My hands, too sorry 
to drink from your streams. 

I turn over rocks and soft houses 
to forage for anything still green. 

Thingvellir National Park, Iceland

Shelby Newsom is a writer and editor residing in Michigan. A former editor at Autumn House Press and Coal Hill Review, she now runs her own editorial business working collaboratively with indie authors, publishers, and publications and is also an editor for Deep Wild Journal. She received her MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her work has been featured in Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, Pilgrimage Magazine, The Hopper, and Hawk & Whippoorwill. Discover more of her work at shelbynewsom.com.

Featured image courtesy the poet.

Remembrances

“A man’s real possession is his memory. 
in nothing else is he rich…”
Alexander Smith

Remember those tall log pole pine trees beside our
cabins in The Redwoods in Yosemite, the flowing
south fork of the Merced River just down the road
where we pitched our beach chairs on the sand near
the water’s edge, and watched our kids swimming
in the cold pool formed by the river? Remember the
Chilnualna Falls, with its flowing ribbons of white
and blue falling over pied boulders of granite near
the place where I got you stranded on a steep hill
when the trail ran out? Remember the Wawona
swinging bridge that hung over the river where we
slid down the smooth rock face to the pool below,
and our hike through wildflowers in the meadows
on the trail to the bridge. Remember the warmth of
the sun on our backs as we relaxed under the laced
shade of trees, talking of simple things, and reading
books? Remember the balmy nights as we sat on the
cabin porch under bashful stars peeking through
redwood trees, and the eerie sounds of night birds,
and things that went bump in the night?  Remember
our laughter and gentle political discussions, shinny
stars that looked like tiny specs in the heaven’s
black carpet, and the huge orange moon that peeked
out at us from between the pine trees as we sat in
the dark of the night? 

Those idle hours of joy are but fading memories
now, now that we are older and spend our time in
the summertime on our porch, drinking coffee and
munching on your homemade cookies; and 
inside our library during the warm nights watching
our Agatha mysteries on TV, and nodding off in our
chairs.

Where did all the time go as we went on our many
vacations to Yosemite, swam in small streams and
the Merced River, and in the deep blue ponds it
formed, rambled along deer trails next to small blue
rills, raised our children, built our home, created
herb and vegetable gardens, and planted fruit trees? 

Time has vanished too quickly, and old age is tak-
ing us over. And now winter is here again, and the
pouring down rain batters our old farmhouse, while
the raucous din of thunder roars into our library, and
bright flashes of lightening flit across the ceiling.
We are finding we are mere shadows of our former
selves, but we are finding a mysterious solace as we
remember our memories of all those wonderful
places in Yosemite that we visited when we were
young.

James, a retired Professor and octogenarian earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He is a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee and has had four poetry books “The Silent Pond,” (2012), “Ancient Rhythms,” (2014), “LIGHT,” (2016), and “Solace Between the Lines,” (2019), over 1560 poems, five novels and 35 short stories published worldwide in over 250 publications.

Featured image courtesy Boston Public Library.

American Zebra: Praise Song for the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument

I like how, when I look out 
on this desert Idaho plain,
I can pretty much graze my palm 
on the Pliocene—
and doing so, greet the great wide savannahs of Africa—
mossy and tree lined,
laced in saber-toothed cats,
hyena-like dogs and a half caravan 
of even-toed camels.  

I like how, when I look upon these bluffs, 
I have to leave off acuity—
level all spectacle, 
un-specimen Earth. Even so,
here blows
another tumbleweed: Be careful
with that match! 
You see, my lowly
rollicking O, 

I love how this lookout 
offers no viewfinder. 
So I must mesh with the idea 
of what might have been 
the lontra weiri,
Hagerman’s mystery otter, 
nearly four million years ago. 
Should I not add this riverine creature
was named for singer Bob Weir?  

I have to admit I am way, way thankful
he fathered the Grateful Dead, 
which helped bring us hippies.
That, plus those love-ins 
we never quite had down in Nampa, 
where I grew up, 117 miles from here:
It all instilled what I will call 
gratitude’s latitude—grains of
particulate hope.

I like how standing still in this place 
serves to remind 
that every epochal zone 
clearly inheres in us. Notice. 
Most people only look 
for what they can see. Oh, Great Dane-ish 
Hagerman Horse: Maybe you’re Africa’s own
Grévy's zebra. Should I not grab you here
in this wayfaring now—and stiffly, by the mane, 

to say yes, of course, I’m indebted? 
I’m here at this look-out—the long meanwhile 
whole Snake River histories
molted and soaked in 
and found their shot to break free
to the bone layer
under that soil-load
dubbed by the digging biz 
overburden. 

Listen here, Visitor.
Lay your troubles down,  
once and for everyone. 
And say 
can you see—hey : 
here’s some binoculars : What kind
of place will we be 
when I cross over
into you and you cross over into me?

This poem is based on the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument near Hagerman, Idaho. It contains the largest concentration of Hagerman horse fossils in North America. The monument is internationally significant because it protects the worlds richest known fossil deposits from the late Pliocene epoch, 3.5 million years ago. Its plants and animals represent the last glimpse of time that existed before the Ice Age.

Diane Raptosh’s collection American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016). In 2018 she won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in Excellence. She teaches literature and creative writing and co-directs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at the College of Idaho. Her seventh collection, Run: A Verse-History of Victoria Woodhull, was published by Etruscan 2021 as part of a multi-author volume, Trio. Her newest chapbook, Hand Signs from Eternity’s Yurt, will be published in summer 2022 (Kelsay Books). www.dianeraptosh.com  

 Featured image courtesy NPS

On a Morning in Crater Lake National Park

We walked gravel paths
outlined in borders
of timber-wood, winding
our way through white fir, 
white pine, western white pine,
close to the drop-off
of a ravine. 

He was three years and fearless,
skipping ahead with Aunt Elizabeth,
escaping the path to dart among shadows
and rough-bark trunks and the edge 
of a ravine. 

He crouched behind a boulder and
whispered too loud.
I spied his blond head.
Where are you? Where are you?
I pretended to be afraid he was lost
when I was only afraid he was too close
to a ravine.

He ran to me and 
I inhaled the beauty
of his hair and chin and
the elegance of nature’s perils. 

Nancy Jorgensen is a Wisconsin writer and musician. Her memoir, “Go, Gwen, Go: A Family's Journey to Olympic Gold,” is co-authored with daughter Elizabeth Jorgensen and published by Meyer & Meyer Sport. Her choral education books are published by Hal Leonard Corporation and Heritage Music Press. Other works appear at Prime Number Magazine, River Teeth, Wisconsin Public Radio, CHEAP POP, Brevity blog, and elsewhere. Find out more at NancyJorgensen.weebly.com

Featured image courtesy the poet.

At Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

The snow geese descend, 
leaning back, it seems, against the pond, 
as they land,
wings out—for drag? For balance? 
I never think about flying 
in the way creatures with wings do. 
The mechanics, I mean. In my dreams, 
it seems Sisyphean. To the west, 
Manhattan is a vacant, glinting, line of teeth. 
No one is in sight
so I pull my mask aside 
to smell the brine
of the bay. To the side 
of the path, prickly pear 
and their withered purple fruit 
lay flat to the ground,
waiting out these months 
of loneliness. I miss the glossy ibis 
who, long done breeding, 
have returned to Belize. 
But they made way
for the snow geese, 
these creatures of fairy tale,
here in the hundreds, filling 
the air with horns. I envy them 
their flock, their airborne skeins,
the raucous sound that fills their bodies 
and this body and the body of West Pond. 
All the way home, I hear 
their echo. Empty trains pass 
overhead and a few lone airplanes; 
in the noise I hear thousands of flapping wings.

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Gateway National Recreation Area

Emily Hockaday is a Queens-based poet and editor. Her newest chapbook, Beach Vocabulary, is forthcoming from Red Bird Chaps. She is author of Space on Earth (Grey Book Press), Ophelia: A Botanist's Guide (Zoo Cake Press), What We Love & Will Not Give Up (Dancing Girl Press), and Starting a Life (Finishing Line Press). She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and @E_Hockaday.

Featured image courtesy the poet.

Is it enough to look east, look, look

You asked to be in the haul of slow pleasure: 

the arrival light, the fish-
scale light, flap hole light, that heroic 
particular  

declaration, and the immense ocean beside it as a slick-skirted tuning fork.

Though you didn’t know to ask
it showed what cannot be held down.  

Then the ocean retracting, horizontal, a blue wash

and eventide long and broody.

You got here to begin with not knowing 
and see it gives you enough.  

Another week the blurred rain steers to wet platters of fields. 

One by one, days revive, repeat, displace— 

a mercy. The glaciers 
become diminutive. 

Photo by Bob Godwin.

Lauren Camp is the author of five books, most recently Took House (Tupelo Press). She is the recipient of a Dorset Prize and was a finalist for the Arab American Book Award. An emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute, she has received support from Storyknife Writers Retreat, Denver Botanic Gardens, and the Taft-Nicholson Center. In 2022, she will be Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park in 2022. www.laurencamp.com

Featured image courtesy the poet.

from A Wichita Mountains Ontology

              In the rutty clatter of the
Narrows: Rattlesnake Island
              our stumbling cusses echoed in
              crumpled cliffs
     a knotted clot of
sand scurf
                   Cambrian bones
         shell teeth scattered by the
left hook
                    of unsigned eons

      The old honeylocust
galled & cankered 
                    beckons at
a bend in Panther Creek
            thorn clusters
                   aging red

Seth Copeland is the founding editor of the text/image archive petrichor. His poems have appeared in Kestrel, Yes Poetry, Heavy Feather Review, and Dream Pop, among others. Originally from Oklahoma, Seth currently teaches and studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Featured image by Brent Lind BY CC 2.0

Animal Time

I do better in animal time,
a creeping dawn, slow ticking toward dusk.
In the middle of the day on the Nebraska prairie,
I’m unnerved by subdued sounds, as if listening
through water, even the high-pitched drone of the
cicadas faint; the blackbirds half-heartedly singing.
As newlyweds, my parents drove cross country to
Death Valley, last leg of their escape from New York,
the thick soups of their immigrant mothers, generations
of superstitions that squeezed them from all sides.
They camped under stars that meant no harm.
It was the silence that alerted them to danger.
They climbed back into their tiny new car, locked
its doors and blinked their eyes until daylight.

written at Homestead National Monument of America, NE

Carol V. Davis is the author of Because I Cannot Leave This Body (2017), Between Storms (2012) and won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. Her poetry has been read on National Public Radio, the Library of Congress and Radio Russia. Twice a Fulbright scholar in Russia, she taught in Ulan-Ude, Siberia, winter 2018 and was scheduled to return to Siberia as a Fulbright Specialist, Spring 2022. She teaches at Santa Monica College and Antioch Univ. Los Angeles. She had two National Parks Service writer-in-residence fellowships: Homestead National Monument of America, NE, Aug. 2011 and Hubbell Trading Post, AZ (in the Navajo Nation), Aug. 2015.

Featured image courtesy the poet

“Animal Time” was previously published in:

Harpur Palate vol. 13, No. 1 (Country Living Issue), Summer & Fall 2013
American Life in Poetry, Dec. 2014
Because I Cannot Leave This Body, State University Press, 2017

Three-mile Bridge, Late Summer, Headwaters

At the railing, listen to all that is offered: the song
of the creek below, a glass of water
poured endlessly over cobble.  The lonely song

of a hermit thrush, somewhere unseen, a reminder
of so much sitting just beyond the edge of perception.
High above, a gentle wind stirring the canopy like a sigh.

Summer grows short.  My daughter will be leaving
for the city soon.  A sycamore leaf drops in slow motion
from above, landing in the water spinning—and is slowly borne away. 

Headwaters Forest Reserve, Humboldt County

David Holper has done a little bit of everything: taxi driver, fisherman, dishwasher, bus driver, soldier, house painter, bike mechanic, bike courier, and teacher. He has published a number of stories and poems, including two collections of poetry, The Bridge (Sequoia Song Publications) and 64 Questions (March Street Press). His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, and he has recently won several poetry competitions, in spite of his contention that he never wins anything. He is an emeritus professor at College of the Redwoods and lives in Eureka, California, where his is the city’s first Poet Laureate. He thinks Eureka is far enough the madness of civilization that he can still see the stars at night and hear the Canada geese calling.

Mapping Cliffs and Shadows

Some mornings seem full and empty. Vultures snap at the abundance
of roadkill. Barns with icicles on the eaves spill out burlap sacks of grain.
Lost in mountain hollows, water gushes from split rock. Boulders, thick
and glossed in iron and moss, hold our hands as we ascend the hilltops.  
My sons ahead, poking into each crag the way they touch every fruit
in the bowl. Some are dry and some sour, but lips love their sweet flourish,
the trickle of discovery. At some point, we must taste the sun and spring grass.
We can’t explore every cave and dark crack in this face of the earth.

- The Ledges Trail, Cuyahoga Valley National Park

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 by sf-dvs BY CC 2.0

Inspiration Point

(Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Presidio)

You may not find what you’re looking for.
Today light never regains
strength to make anything golden.
Mountains aren’t the leavened loaves
they could have been. Gone
is the longer conversation you planned
with yourself—the way aroma
of eucalyptus is distracted by wind.
The world is out of whack, aflame, unkind.
Some days your brain will not be wider
than the sky, as Emily promised.
But suddenly up out of the ground: stairs
made of railroad ties, rows of beautiful
reason. So you climb. You see
Alcatraz in blue and hear yourself cheer
history; the swimming escapees and you forget
mortality. Here, the rare serpentine grasslands,
Monterey pines, the bees fast
asleep in flowers, ravens
with their insight. A hummingbird working
her wings to live up to her name.

Marjorie Thomsen, author of “Pretty Things Please” (Turning Point, 2016), has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems have been read on The Writer’s Almanac and she has received poetry awards from the New England Poetry Club and the University of Iowa, among others. A poem about hiking in a dress and high heels was made into a short animated film. Marjorie has served as a Poet in Residence in different communities and is a psychotherapist and instructor at Boston University’s School of Social Work.

Featured image courtesy the poet