The Seasons

Winter

Small creatures write letters
to the morning in the snow.

Spring

Each flower waits for its moment
to step upon the stage.

Summer

Now is the time for dancing most of all.

Fall

Curled leaves beneath my feet and
early morning doesn’t beckon any more.

*

David Fraser

From

far above,

hawk-vision: roofs

fields estuary - a breathtaking

sight.

*

Claudia Messelodi

forgotten adventures--
my childhood in a basket
of toys

*

Vibeke Laier

Outside the craft fair, ash trees:
gold leaves, red berries, fresh snow.
Inside, nothing prettier.

*

Sue Blott

Cool Draughts

This day--
Celebrating--
Sends forth the breeze
Like wine
Amazingly thin
Drinkable
And delicious

*

Lyn C. A. Gardner

One woman’s garden—so lush with lupine and coreopsis,
the hummingbirds are thick as flies.

*

Kathleen Brewin Lewis

We are All So Vulnerable

In all the rivers of the world,
at this moment, a little bird
is drinking in the shallows where
the danger lurks.

*

David Fraser

languages take root in one another, weed-like. sounds originate from other sounds, and are strung together: new necklace, but the same old beads.

*

Camille Thigpen

Soon, hollow thunder.
Morning drops her bar of soap
in her antique tub.

*

M. Flynn Ragland

summer breeze--
a dragon fly
across the white waterlily

*

Vibeke Laier

Cat pads down the basement steps;
his tail a disappearing question mark.

*

Sue Blott

Deep Wood

A cater-

   pillar

      crosses

   & re-

      crosses

   the black-

jack

   oak.

      All morn-

   ing he

winds

   down-

      ward

   with the

sun.

   Until fin-

      ally,

   stones

&

   lichen

      crawl

   with day-

light.

   The

      bright 

   leg

of morn-

   ing

      bristles

        over

    leaf-

fall;

         darkness

disappear-

     ing into

          the mush-

     room’s

slen-

     der

          throat.

*

Al Ortolani

Glittering surface,

the last boat comes back safe, led

by the crescent moon.

*

Claudia Messelodi

On the Patio

Speckles of light on the scarred brick seemed the work of some mad watercolorist, the sky’s blue washed in between the leaves, the fern’s lampblack shadows.

*

M. Flynn Ragland

Late season butterflies hadron-accelerated in sudden gusts

*

Caroline Howlett

Soap suds swoosh and swirl in the glass -
Mesmerizing,
Taming my tumbling thoughts

*

Maureen Bailey

autumn’s barren beach
sunburned tourists disappear
sad summer sandal

*

Sandy Patton

lights stick, skittish, to illuminating a riverbed ceiling. (but they shimmer all around.)

*

Camille Thigpen

to the farm hill
a path of lantern traffic
harvest moon

*

Ramesh Anand

terrorists
of the commonplace
dandelions
exploding
in tiny yellow fury

*

James Newton

Over forged cattails,
a bronze casting of the moon
hangs through darkened leaves.

*

M. Flynn Ragland

Autumn

Just like that, before I knew it,
25 years had gone,
the children were grown,
and I was out on the deck
with my wife watching the dry,
brown leaves fall silently
to the ground.

*

Michael Estabrook