The last tiger swallowtail sips the geranium in the sun of the last September Saturday

*

Charlotte Babb
Miss Charlotte's Babblings

naked in the boat
waiting for the sun between
two big clouds

*

Monika Thoma-Petit

Waist high in the grassy field, three deer lift their heads as the train passes. Five minutes down the line, another deer runs alongside the train.

*

Juliet Wilson
Crafty Green Poet

The evening sky was milky white.

A latte, swirled and creamy.

*

Julia Cumings
Red Otter

Coffee Grounds

If I were to hold my heart in your kitchen, with its pink curtains and chartreuse stove and plastic burners glowing supernatural orange, I'd fire up the griddle and open freezer doors. Streaming hot milk, I would call you on the backline, I'd use the number I'd found as the train lurched by, in my favorite blue journal I'd sketch with my favorite black pencil. There I would copy - I'm only a scribe decorating sacred text - the code messaged on a billboard selling milk from happy, only happy black and white cows. It was you to me, streaming time.

*

Deb Scott
Stoney Moss

Suddenly it's a goose-bump day, a cover-up-your-skin day

*

Barbara F. Ray

Today I heard a crow gargle

gargle with a pebble plucked from the wind's stream

*

S.Roit.
S.Roit.

Saturday night at the Ritz, we watch them swing through smokedrifts. Spun out, girls come back like cyclones.

*

Jo Hemmant
florescence

Human history is only 100 lifetimes old.

*

Matt Westwood

the balcony is littered with torn leaves and a white blanket of hail

*

Barbara Hollace

Chipmunks playing chase on the roof make me wonder why I am always sitting at my computer instead of enjoying the sun outside.

*

Tamara Staples
Desire to Heal

Tall sleek trunks finger a silky morning sky, catching first light in green baskets rimming July's horizon. The forest breath rises and falls in cicada song.

*

rm mist
What The Muses Leave Behind

Richard Anthony Bacon – 20.10.29 - 16.07.08

Om mane pame hum whispered into his ear, his fingers move within mine...

His eye is open...what does he see?

Waxen skin. My dad is not there. Now I understand the separateness of body and mind.

Kate Bacon
Pier to Peer

welcome, Theo

Through the cinched halo of my pelvis, this earthbound angel descends.

*

Sage Cohen
Sage A Vu

Five minutes before midnight, a gnat attracted to the reflected light of my computer monitor dives into my eye.

*

Dave Bonta
Via Negativa

This Lilly is a long-boned woman with legs like skewers and empty breasts lying on the furrows of ribs. Her smile comes from an old heart, strong beyond reason. She smiles at laughing visitors who kiss, kiss, kiss, planting babies in her lap and presents on the bed. She tells them that she’s had lunch, but the menu escapes her; food appears like magic - chicken is fish, porridge is soup and everything is beautiful.

*

Irene Cunningham
Runaway Granny

Walking walking all day seems neverending, aching, only to drive out and see the views of mountains and sea and feel whole again.

*

Nalini Harvey

Crow croaking in the rain – top branch – each croak thrown out like a seal bobbing for fish – the same movement of head and neck and body.

*

A. F. Harrold
A. F. Harrold

Guilt, responsibility, fear, self-doubt, remorse, stress, anger, exhaustion, sadness, grief, frustration, anxiety, lack of knowledge. Those were the rocks in my wheelbarrow. And then came one more: “He’d get better faster at home".

*

Jeanne Waite Follett
Gullible's Travels

At H's henhouse

The rooks beat the rats and chickens to the food.

John Loader

The rain drops filled the screen.

*

Joan M Cormier

Footprints on the old tarmac stepped over a volcano errupting a golden dandelion.

*

Marie Fullerton

Through the blind's horizontals and scaffolding verticals, the roofers flicker as they climb to work.

*

Clare Grant
Three Beautiful Things

Warm morning sunlight
on summer-hopeful shoulders.
Daisy freckled lawns.

*

Rachel Green
When The Dogs Bite

Engulfed in husband's waterproofs, I brave the rain - for goodbye kisses.

*

Anna Reiers
My Writing Life

Summer morning in the Peak; tiny horses gathered in dozens in the windy fields.

*

Jo Bell
Bell Jar

Honest. Tasty. Real. Chewing the words outside the Dorset cereal packet, I find more nourishment inside.

*

Kate Burton
www.kateburton.co.uk

The beach from a condo balcony: occasional glimpses of steel gray waves through vanilla buildings in a sea of concrete, punctuated by the dark green poodle heads of palm trees.

*

Elizabeth Westmark
Switched at Birth

the wind moving through the dried grasses...nature's snare drums

*

Janet Smith
Mid-Life Clarity

the electrician tells me that the cigales start singing once the temperature reaches 30 degrees, and today they do, and stop, in an instant, as a cool breeze rushes over me and through the trees

*

Lynne Rees
an open field