Reverie at Acadia

Distant buoy bells filter up the forest heights.
Below, the tide rises, breathes, sinks
toward sleep as we murmur off the day.

A sickle moon cuts through
evergreens to shadow-dance the tent flap.
Paint-brush fronds of pine needles

soften sound while maple leaves translate
the breeze. Surf curls below the cliffs, and
each roll of bells syncopates with ocean swells.

Always, the night watercolor sea.
And how across its blue-black back
a lunar diamond blanket undulates.

Muffled, everywhere. Except a crackle
from the next tent’s firewood,
its nearby hiss of pitch.

Before dreams burrow in our sleeping bag,
senses tamp. Except hearing and balance:
cousins of the inner ear, playing tricks.

Your flashlight flicks back on. You ask,
as the two moons of your glasses glint,
Is it me, or are we in a boat adrift?

Eric Forsbergh's poetry has appeared in Artemis, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Cafe Review, Streetlight magazine, The Journal of Neurology, Ponder Review, and multiple other venues. He has twice won the premier prize of the Poetry Society of Virginia named after Edgar Allen Poe, and has received a Pushcart nomination. His second book of poetry, on DNA and its implications, will appear in 2023.

Writing at Point Reyes National Sea Shore, CA

i teased away a little time for a two-week writing residency
                        in a secluded place,
                        an open space inlet
                        in the wildness           

                                                 near point reyes national seashore,                                                                        

                                                                                                at the pacific ocean.

left everything at home but--
                        my writing notes,
                        a computer and
                        cell phone,
                                                to tell my family                                                

                                                                                                “i’m okay.”
my writing shed had a picturesque view
                        of migratory water birds like
                        canada geese,
                        western sandpiper shorebirds,
                        california gulls,
                        elegant terns, and
                        great blue herons,                                    

                                                and even

                                                                                                large brown pelicans.

they mesmerized me, watching them from my writing shed,
                        gazing at rising and
           
                                                lowering tides.
                                                 

most days, i stayed there from morning till evening,
                        not writing much,
                                               
                                                but witnessing everything
                                                                                               
                                                                                                outside                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     my window.
                        

 day-trippers visited the town center
                        on their way to the ocean and hiking trails.

                       
                                                svelte cyclists
                                                filled the streets
                                   

                                                            on expensive bicycles
                                                            at this resting point for all those           

                                                                                                weekend
                                                                                                                                    warriors
                                   
                                                who took to marin and
                                                sonoma county’s                                                                                                                                
backcountry roads
                                                            to experience

                                                                        gently rolling hills                                                                                                

                                                                                                rise and                                             

                                                                                                            descend

                                                                                                                        like ocean waves                       
                                        
                                                                                                pouring into watery passages
                                                                                   
                                                                                                            destined for the

                                                                                                                         pacific.
           

rising early enough
            i’d witnessed the dampness and
                                    the smell of fresh marine layered air
                                    left from morning dew and fog fingers,
                                    drifting across the tide pools from the sea.                                                

                                                but it was only                                                                        

                                                                        sometimes.

most mornings, groggy with half-shut eyes,
                                    i rose only to go to the bathroom
                                    then staggered quickly back into my bed,
                                    into the cocoon of my soft, 100% organic egyptian                                                                          
cotton duvet-covered comforter
                                                                        pulled over my head.
 

comforter-over-head signaled
                                    a long night of writing,
                                                when words seemed to
                                                            spill                                                               

                                                                out

                                                                        of

                                                                                    me.                                                                                                  

the wee hours of the morning
            found me
                                    writing                                                        

                                                until
                                                            6:00 am.

astonished, i asked myself, “where did the time go?”

                                    wondering, “why is this my time to write?”
                                                and not time spent in my comfortable writing shed with
                                                                        pristine
                                                                        views
                                                                        of                                                                                

                                                                        NATURE.

instead, i watched trees shimmer outside my window,
                                                loosening leaves
                                                            dancing in the  

                                                                                    fall afternoon air.

and herons diving into tide pools for fish as
                                                families of ducks swimming on                                                           

                                                                                    glassy waters.

and finches hopping among woody branches of rosemary
                                               releasing their strong aroma in the air
                                                when my jeans brushed against them on walks to

                                                                                    my shed.

on hot days,
                        smells of sagebrush intensified, and
                                    purple verbena flowers burst
                                                from their lime-green leaves.

my senses took in so many things from my writing shed
                        —plant scents
                        marine smells,
                        buzzing insects, lizards,
                        birds in flight—
                                    hearing them as they foraged among vegetation and stones—                                               

                                                            so, so many

                                                                                                distractions.

but maybe i wrote in my room at night because through my window,
                        looking into the darkness
                        there was no one there but me,
                        no other sounds,
                        no other smells,
                        no other moving living things,
                                    only my fingertips,
                                                tap, tap, tapping on my laptop computer keys,
                                                            and the rustling papers of five years of
                                                                        draft,
                                                                                    after draft
                                   
                                                                                                of my ever-changing manuscript.

From Lizzetta: After a career as an artist, art historian/curator (MFA/PhD), I resumed writing fiction, leaning into storytelling, and conjoining visual art and literature. Recently, I discovered poems I wrote fifteen years ago, which encouraged my reentry into writing poetry. Black people in landscapes influence the stories and my poetic voice, which relates to nature and environments where Black bodies traditionally or contemporarily traversed. I explore their navigation in those spaces. In doing so, I also introduce poetry into my storytelling.

While I’m not a trained poet, I explore a variety of poetic forms, including haiku, lyric, free verse, performance, prose, and abecedarian. I’m editing my book, Seasons at Lakeside Dairy (The University Press of Mississippi), compiling a poem chapbook, and completing a collection of short stories.

Publications: Catamaran, Santa Cruz, CA, New Guard Review, Brunswick, ME, Rigorous, New Orleans, LA, Paper Nautilus Press, Enfield, CT, and away | Experiments in Travel and Telling, Oberlin College and Conservatory, Oberlin, OH.

All images courtesy Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins.

Quantum Entanglement

At Hanalei, the bay’s all glitter   
and mild thrash     
beach chairs      striped towels      blown umbrellas

On the sand a drift log’s roots still clutch
smooth grey rocks it unearthed, coming down
where the river rushes fresh water into the bay

December heat after a week of storm
brilliant sunshine      the stillness of it  
and the longing in the middle
                 --you are not here—

egrets fly to the top of the palms
        white sentries of the visible world

they strut the wet ditches
ahead of the lawn machines
or walk the grass
on the edge of the mown course
with the Nenes and chickens,
the red-crested cardinal and the doves

Neighborhood cats dart in and out
of a pink hibiscus hedge
where last week you watched with me
all the unfoldings:    gold sunrise in the trees
pale sunset over breaking waves   
night wind in the palms

dark-sky island 
where we searched for Sirius among the stars—

Alicia Hokanson lives in Seattle in the Piper’s Creek watershed, and  also spends time on Waldron Island in the Salish Sea.

Her newest poetry collection, Perishable World, published by Pleasure Boat Studio, was awarded the Eyelands Book Awards grand prize in December 2021.

Dawn at Shenandoah

Where the peak of Shenandoah merges
with the indigo sky, a pastel glow buds
into a new land alive from someone’s colorful chalk.
The earth unfolds itself from its sleepy grayness,
mountain air amber-tinted, wine-spiced.

From the boulder of Buck Hollow Overlook,
yellow-tipped oatgrass and blue flag iris
sway close against my dangling legs, soaped
in the morning dew. Scarlet tanagers hover
like hope pulsing in flaming red.

I close my eyes and feel a light crack
in my grief and regrets and turn them into words
that throb in my unwritten poem, with clarity
like footsteps on a hilly path. When I open my eyes,
the soft swell of mountains is outlined against
the distant sky, the same blue as my cotton
dress waving in the breeze. 

Allison Xu is a young writer from Maryland. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Blue Marble Review, Backchannels Journal, Unbroken, Paper Lanterns, The Daphne Review, The Weight Journal, and elsewhere. When she's not writing, she enjoys reading, baking, and playing with her beagle.

October at the Pond

Scoby Pond, Francestown, New Hampshire

Cool night air brushes summer-warmed lake,
creates grey-blue morning fog
ghosting over the water. 
Fishermen troll along the shore,

hoping to catch the big one
before it plunges to dark safety
when ice forms above, and turtles
bury themselves in mud.

My neighbor is splitting
wood, stacking it against the cold. 

On an afternoon walk down our gravel lane,
my shoes scuff through mounds of dry leaves,
whose sweet scent mingles with smoky
memories of last night’s campfire.

Overhead, like licking flames,
maple trees’ last red-orange leaves, backlit
by sunlight bouncing off the lake,
flicker and blaze in the brisk autumn breeze.

Sheryl Guterl claims these titles:  mother, grandmother, former English teacher, former elementary school counselor, Albuquerque Museum Docent, alto, bookworm.  In the summer, she writes poetry from a New Hampshire cabin, surrounded by water, birds, tall pines, and campfire smoke.   In the winter months, in New Mexico, lizards, sandhill cranes, and a rich cultural landscape inspire her.  Sheryl’s recent poems are in Capsule Stories, The Bluebird Word, Clerestory, SLAB, Zephyr Review, and several local anthologies.  

Banner image courtesy Derek Wright.

Shadow

Red-tailed hawk
Calls into the grey air
A silent owl
Glides into oncoming dark
Wood ducks slip
Behind Canada geese
In the icing winter pond
What remains of light
Freezes into the ice.
Small birds, in silhouette,
Flit amid the brambles.
I am there, too--
Wingless, reduced to shadow,
Becoming one with the night.

Sandy Lee Carlson is a writer and educator living in Woodbury, Connecticut, where she is poet laureate.  Sandy loves Connecticut and all that is wild and natural about it.  She has published several collections of poetry, most recently Mother Tongue.  Find out more at sandycarlson.net

Fugue in Green

Twice, on my way to Upper Queets Valley - -
a dead end with a ranger station
(in season) as far as the map detailed - -
I had to stop the car to drag
fallen branches from the gravel road,
though I recalled no great winds of late.

I didn’t expect much company
when I arrived that slate gray day,
fair for February, from what
the towering conifers left
of the sky.  Sound too seemed to recede
into baffles and spongey earth.

With no one close to consult,
I walked down one trail, but it soon
submerged beneath a flowing sheet
of clear water, clover-green vines
thriving below the surface, although
I couldn’t make out the type.

So I turned another way, drawn
from chamber to chamber
as if in a cave or maze,
imagining tales my kids
might have made from moss-draped
monsters and ghostly elk.  Now dampness

blurred the boundaries between
the states of matter, growth and decay;
fungi grew in crescents at the edges
of vernal pools; windfallen
trunks trellised and nourished
hosts of their successors.

Mark writes poetry and nonfiction, and is a regular nonfiction contributor to the online Montreal Review (https://www.themontrealreview.com/).  He practices law in Boston and lives with his wife, the poet Marjorie Thomsen, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He is grateful be participating for the first time in the Parks and Points Poetry Series.

Banner image courtesy Mark Jensen .

Watching One Raindrop From My Seattle Window in Lieu of Visiting Hulda Klager Gardens in Woodland, WA (during COVID)

last week’s dark nubbins
                                                spread petals to open as lilacs
            with each corolla blossom
letting go
                        i turn to inhale
pause for a long linger on gray painted porch steps

here i am coming        and stalling     and going
where hours of rain
                                    leave a sheen
                                                            droplets
on heart-shaped leaves                       
                                                            drift
to edges
of each flat green surface

i focus                                     as one droplet becomes
becomes pendant       
transparent
this
suspended jewel
                        soon will surrender
                                                to gravity
                                                            i wait
for the molecules’ final parting

                                    wind tug
                                    top branch shake 

still the pendant holds                         without a visible shiver
this invisible quiver
no motion commotion
although i know inside                       exists incessant clatter
 
i watch until
this single pendant                  widens                         on the stem
then drops                   lost                  newfound

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have been published in numerous literary journals including Gyroscope, Raven Chronicles, Rat’s Ass Review, and Banshee as well as in several anthologies. A former school-based speech-language pathologist (SLP), she resides in Seattle, WA. Her work has received three Pushcart nominations. A chapbook, “Postcards from the Lilac City” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. 

Banner image courtesy the poet.

Lehigh Parkway

(for my running buddy, Janet)

So many years we’ve jogged across this covered bridge,
these city parkway trails, but now you need talking
more than training, so we walk among bare branches
twined with bittersweet. You speak of job loss and how
you missed the warning signs. I listen as November sun
and a brisk pace warm us, in the background the song
of a creek rushing over rocks below.

Then a hawk dives into leaves just off the wooded trail.
As one, we freeze, scarce dare to breathe. We note
the whitish breast, the wings a rich mosaic of chocolate,
sable, tan. Above the buteo’s hooked, efficient beak, we spy
its yellow cere, bright as the Norway maple up the trail,
those keen eyes trained on us. One swift flap and the airborne
hawk shows empty talons. We hear a scurry, glimpse
the squirrel’s tail, escaping like lost opportunity.

The hawk drops back. Slowly it turns, spreading its auburn fan.
“A red-tail!” you whisper. “Hunting here, so close to us!”
Then your wry smile. “Sometimes, even the hawk misses.” 

This poem was inspired by and is set in the Lehigh Parkway, a public park near downtown Allentown, Pa. Featuring seven miles of trails, the park was developed largely by the WPA (Works Progress Administration) in the 1930s. A 700-foot-long, stone retaining wall with decorative turrets and massive stairways from the road to the park is an impressive reminder of its history.

An earlier version of this poem appeared in the anthology, A Walk with Nature: Poetic Encounters that Nourish the Soul (University Professors Press, 2019). 

After a career as a journalist specializing in bicycling and active travel, Susan Weaver discovered tanka, a five-line Japanese verse form. Her tanka have appeared in Moonbathing, red lights, Ribbons, and other journals. Her tanka prose, “A Date with the Moon: Limulus polyphemus,” appeared in Parks & Points & Poetry 2021. Weaver is now editor of Ribbons, the journal of the Tanka Society of America. She and her husband live in Allenown, Pa., where she enjoys theatre, music, and the outdoors.

Banner image courtesy Susan Weaver.

One October Hour

Wet leaves slick the woods trail and stick to my boots. I only have an hour.

I’ve been trying to convince my 10-yr-old daughter to watch the movie Little Shop of Horrors.

When I’m dead, will she remember me when singing alone from films we watched together?

The last time I walked these woods, the path was nearly swallowed by July’s green-walled weedy opulence.

At her age, singing with my cassette tape of The Little Mermaid, I heard echoes of “Somewhere That’s Green” in “Part of Your World.”

Bending below overhanging locust branches I am not, still, part of these woods. Laundry awaits, and components of dinner.

When I turned over both cassettes and saw the same two names—Alan Menken, Howard Ashman—it was like surfacing from under water.

The creek trickles brown through brown. Maple roots exposed by washed-out soil on an incline become rungs for bootsoles.

I only come to the woods when life asks absolutely nothing else of an hour of me.

All Audrey wanted was a rectangle of green-ness without skyscraper alleys. All Ariel wanted was air that allowed for burning.

Whatever I am to my daughter on the day I die will be what I am to her forever.

I will have heard all the music I will ever hear. My daughter will discover more without me.

When she is sixty, she’ll rake dried memories of me into piles in her mind. I can’t choose them nor identify the trees they fell from.

At home, when I kick mud from my boots, how many fragments of how many trees will I have brought home, left just outside the door?

Kerry Trautman is a lifelong Ohioan, and a co-founder of ToledoPoet.com and the "Toledo Poetry Museum" page on Facebook, which promote Northwest Ohio poetry events. Her work has appeared previously in Parks & Points, as well as in numerous other journals and anthologies. Kerry's poetry books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020,) Marilyn: Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas (Gutter Snob Books 2022,) and Unknowable Things (Roadside Press 2023.) Her fiction chapbook Irregulars is forthcoming in summer 2023 from Stanchion Books.

Banner image courtesy Derek Wright.

Estuary

oh, to be here again alone with you 
in a thick silence amongst the oaks and pines 
paddling along through these deep waters

we listen once more for the call of the loon
only to find a ritual flight of dragonflies 
beckoning us downriver—shall we follow?

they dart here and there then circle back again
we conjure gentle ripples in our wake
and glide above sleepy fish and ghost crabs

and we hear the distant call of seabirds from above
and there’s a comfort to their returning
and river otters watch us as we make our way

Alyson Plante is a visual artist, designer, and writer who enjoys nurturing a sustained creative habit. Her poetry chapbooks include Void Darlings and Overgrown Gardens. Her poems have appeared in online journals, on street murals in Charlotte, in art exhibitions in Richmond, and in creative vending machines in DC. She currently lives in Virginia with her husband and children. (You can find out more about Alyson’s projects at www.plantecreativestudio.com ) 

Sandhill Crane Access Park

A sandhill crane flies, its long dark legs follow behind,
dragging the wind with it. Its long neck stretches
shadows below, a straight compass arrow pointing
where the sun rises. Its red forehead matches a hot sun
looming over the Florida coastline. Its white cheeks
swallow my breathe, stabs the air with its pointed bill.

Across, immature cranes show reddish-brown
and gray bellies, standing still as the land
as if planted like a white flag of surrender.

One crane swoops to defend its clutch of eggs,
its wings acting like a parachute.
The brooding crane starts kicking and jumping
to chase away a small animal I cannot see;
perhaps, it’s a raccoon.

The crane’s animalistic panic cries
makes me want to help, making the father in me
respond, thinking of defending my own child.
The only weapon the crane possess
is the rare chance of striking the predator’s skull
with that incredibly sharp beak.

I am too far away from assistance. The best I can do
is flap my arms to scare the predator away,
screaming like a banshee. But the scuffle ends,
and my whole-body sighs, like a bag the wind drags.

Martin Willitts Jr has 24 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 16 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent book is "Unfolding Towards Love" (Wipf and Stock).

Lost/Found

Finally the chickens raise 
operatic squawks 
in a cacophonous opening act 
waking the audience to believe 
in change 

Mud in the yard 
dries, a little chaos 
of sculpted waves and troughs 
setting for the season   

A dizzying rise 
of hyacinth perfume;
frostbitten pansies 
green out 

Are these enough? 

I can remember joy 
was long ago 
in the middle of a wood;

my breathing expanded  
almost to laughter as I watched 
an extravagance of evergreens 
drawing themselves into the sky 
and a flicker’s mad yells 
became music               

A lifetime resident of Western Washington on traditional Coast Salish land, Sherry Mossafer Rind is the author of six collections of poetry. She has received grants and awards from Anhinga Press, the Seattle and King County Arts Commissions, National Endowment for the Arts, and Artist Trust. Her most recent book is  The Store-House of Wonder and Astonishment, winner of an Eyelands International award, published by Pleasure Boat Studio, 2022.

Banner image courtesy Sherry Mossafer Rind.

End-to-End on Vermont’s Long Trail

                                            the oldest long distance hiking trail in the US.

Little Hoof— a trail name to spoof my eager feet
  but inch-meal stride, a name to celebrate.

How coltish I felt among milkweed and monarchs,
the artsy fungus on the arthritic pine—
conversant with brambly branches,
spring’s vernal pools that shrivel dry.

I reveled in the horsetail, coiled-snake silence—
woods time—my stopped clock.
What tree cared if Little Hoof sometimes dilly-dallied,
tarried in woods that green-draped the sky and velveted my hooves?

I hadn’t thought of Little Hoof lately—
but this morning her flicker in the mirror.

How could I not remember the miles,
the two hundred seventy-two?
How could I not remember how I whinnied, frayed to a frazzle,
but my hooves spurred a giddy-yap, let’s go?

Elves might not exist among toadstools except in fairy tales,
but Little Hoof—yes, she’s still around.

                                                 And when you own your name, you hang onto it.

Pam Ahlen’s work has appeared in Cider Press Review, The Adirondack Review, Women’s Voices for Change, Parks and Points  among others. Pam organizes special  events for Osher (Lifelong Learning Institute at Dartmouth) and compiled the Anthology of Poets and Writers: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years at Dartmouth. She received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the author of the chapbook Gather Every Little Thing (Finishing Line Press) and the co-author (with Anne Bower) of the chapbook Getting it Down on Paper: Shaping a Friendship. (Orchard Street Press). She lives in rural Vermont where she shares her dirt road with the occasional bear.

Banner image courtesy Derek Wright.

Idlewild Park, Sunset

We walk into the marsh
at golden hour. My husband
pulls me back
from the reeds.

At golden hour, my husband
anticipates the dark coming
to the reeds
and waterways around us.

The coming dark anticipates
everything: shadows stretch
over the waterways around us.
A birdcall I can’t place echoes

over the stretched shadows.
What was the shape of the tail?
I can’t place the birdcall or echoes
in the swaying grass.

What is the shape of the tail
end of day? A crescent moon
over the swaying grass
sets on the horizon.

End the day with a moon crescent
between your teeth.
Set the horizon
down.

Between your teeth,
pull me back
down
into the marsh walk.

Emily Hockaday (she/her) is the author of Naming the Ghost (Cornerstone Press 2022) and the forthcoming In a Body (Harbor Editions 2023). She lives in Queens where she writes about city ecology, parenthood, chronic illness, science, and general existential angst. She can be found at www.emilyhockaday.com or tweeting @E_Hockaday.

Banner image courtesy Emily Hockaday.

Climbing Mt. Lion

The sands stretch forever on this side of the world,
            walking the staghorn paths of the dunes
and pulling my body up the rope staked in my hand. I hurled
            this body over curves of ground, under curves of moon.

The tracks ahead of me narrow
            the wide way; they stagger and swagger; they stilt
            and I can see bones crack and multiply, tilt
at the waist and expand. Then marrow
flows like water, teeth tip like an arrow,
            A load shot at the sun. Not-feet now-claws grip silt.
            Anything built once can be rebuilt.

All my legs stretch forever into the sea
            my mammal veins feel a tidepool, a fever
The dry glacier creeping behind me, hungry
            but as slow as a cat in a mirror.

 Amelia Gorman lives in Eureka where she spends her free time exploring forests and fostering dogs. Her fiction appears in Nightscript 6 and Cellar Door. Read her poetry in Penumbric and Vastarien. Her chapbook, the Elgin-winning Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota, is available from Interstellar Flight Press.

Banner image courtesy Amelia Gorman.

Young Wolves

Tufts of fur

caught in the weeds

outside the den,

sticks fragile as squirrel femurs,

and then the tip

of someone’s tail—

the pups are on it,

and they’re all over each other,

planting paws on heads,

standing atop sleepy siblings,

or tussling dreamily in the sun,

round bellies taut,

skinny tails wagging.

At one month old,

their eyes are still sky blue,

but already they lick up

messes of meat, and soon

they’ll lose their baby teeth,

their gaze will go green

then hawk-yellow,

and they’ll join the hunt.

At eight months old,            

they’ll have grown into their feet,

though their shoulders

will stay narrow

for slipping between trees

and forging through snow,

and they will cleave the air,

loping mile after mile,

elemental and fell,

knowing by breath and ear,

and, yes, they will rule by fear,

keeping elk herds on their toes

and bison watchful, sure

the pack has blood in its eyes.

Howls cascade across the valley,

singing willows tall and silver,

aspen quaking along the river,

huckleberry thick on the hill.

The pups blink, lift their heads

and answer.

Dana Sonnenschein teaches literature and creative writing at Southern Connecticut State University. Her publications include Corvus, No Angels but These, Natural Forms, and Bear Country. Recent work appears in Feminist Studies, OPEN: JAL, Split Rock Review, and Terrain.org’s Dear America anthology. You can find her @lone_wolf_poet on Twitter, imagewitchery on Instagram, and by name on Facebook. 

Banner image courtesy Dana Sonnenschein.

Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5

BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, VIRGINIA

We saw humpbacks breach from cliffs
of Machalilla and chased sea turtles through reefs
off Isla de la Plata. Take your daughter here,
I told a friend, while it still is what it is.

Yes, he said, and then he didn’t. Years later
Alba climbs an outcrop and I warn of copperheads
and try to remember the word orogenesis:
a boundary of convergence and compression

or: how mountains are made. Of all my fears
I tend to trust these views. From here only an expert
might tell oak from ash and no one can spot
the endangered salamander. But children see better

the things right in front of them—the cocoon
emptied, the fleck of plastic, shadows on
the breakfast wall. No one wants to hear
that walking in a straight line leads to where

they’re going. Conference halls of ministers
clapping themselves on the backs. Did you know—
Appalachia was once the center of the world?
I stepped into the evidence outside a cave mouth

in Highland County. We like to believe
our patterns are permanent, even as we see
the progress of loss each morning at the mirror.
You stick your finger inside the emptied shell

of a Paleozoic sea and pick loose the proof
of time. With every rain the mantle thins
and deposits: one step closer to being reset,
a degree or two further into nothingness.

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

Andrew Payton graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University in 2014. His poetry has been published in The Journal, Third Coast, Poet Lore, Mid-American Review, Rattle, and elsewhere, and won the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review. He works as a learning designer and climate advocate and lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia with his partner and children.

Banner image courtesy Andrew Payton.

The Journey

Gulf Islands to Blue Ridge

I’ve long wondered about that osprey,
solitary, bent, eyes down,
perched on a pylon against north winds.
Ship Island refugee,
battered cup of lost souls.

Quartz as sand stings in the blow.
Rubbed rock like crushed ice
running from blue hills a million years south
through rivers, bayous
to briny sea.

But here, atop Virginia pine
streamside,
this osprey is heads-up, eyes straight.
Waiting to float above younger stones,
fishing for fresh brown trout.

Marjorie Gowdy writes and paints at home in the Blue Ridge mountains of Callaway, VA. Her poetry has been published in a number of journals, including the international Friends Journal, Artemis, Streetlight, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Roanoke Review, Clinch River Review, Moonstone Arts Center anthologies, and the 2023 Centennial Anthology of the Poetry Society of Virginia and in two anthologies of the Writers Guild of Virginia, among others. She has three chapbooks: Inflorescence: The Pasture at Rest, from Finishing Line Press; Cowgirl by Choice, an online microchap at origamipoetry.com, and coming soon, Horse Latitudes, from Moonstone Arts Press. Books: poems in Quilted Poems (2022) and art in the Gallerium: Extinction catalog. Her essays are included in Katrina: Mississippi Women Remember (2007). Art in spring 2022 issue of Orange Peel Magazine and Barely South Journal.

Banner image courtesy NPS.