Issue Number 63, Winter 2023-24

Solstice

by Charlotte Melin

Charlotte lives on the Cannon River, which flows into the Mississippi south of the confluence with the Minnesota at Bdote Minisota, a Dakota sacred site.

The solstice waits
like a banked fire—
embers at sunrise,
smoldering sparks
at the sunset end of
a somber afternoon.
What do we look for
in these times,
a light-word
flaring against
the dark? Only
a string of geese
scribbles its way
across the sky.

© Charlotte Melin

The Corners of My Fields

You shall not reap all the way to the corners of your field, you shall leave that for the
poor and the stranger.
Leviticus 23:22

by Dick Westheimer

Dick resides on 50 acres of land in the western reaches of Ohio Appalachia where he’s made a home for 46 years. The farm’s soil, farmed out when he arrived, has made a modest recovery in that time and supports year-'round vegetable gardens, a small orchard, and a burgeoning permanent prairie of native grasses and pollinators. The land is bisected by Shayler Run Creek — a tributary of the Little Miami River – which runs, by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to the Gulf of Mexico.

Even the deer have had it rough this winter. This morning,
three wandered onto my frozen yard walking like
each step hurt.

One nosed up at a pine limb just out of reach,
looks to his fellows and back at the branches.
I feel forlorn for him.

Another mouths a spruce bough, tongues a mouthful of pitch,
so bitter he shakes his head in disgust, appears to me like
he’s defeated.

The two yearlings jounce each other, nuzzle a bit as if to play,
vacantly. They then thread a path into the woods on their way to find
more of nothing,

except perhaps a drink at a barely ice-free patch of the creek.
This spring I will find bones of one strewn near the scrub-cedars
across the way.

The rest I guess, will survive
to raid my garden. Then I will turn again
to think

of these lovely creatures as vermin, know their hunger
as trouble, erect a fence of charged wire to keep for me
the corners of my fields.

© Dick Westheimer

Dishwater

by Dick Westheimer

Dick resides on 50 acres of land in the western reaches of Ohio Appalachia where he’s made a home for 46 years. The farm’s soil, farmed out when he arrived, has made a modest recovery in that time and supports year-'round vegetable gardens, a small orchard, and a burgeoning permanent prairie of native grasses and pollinators. The land is bisected by Shayler Run Creek — a tributary of the Little Miami River – which runs, by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to the Gulf of Mexico.

I plunge my hands stiff with cold
in dishwater. The water and I
undo much of what has been done.
The water sees back in my day when
I removed my gloves, still curled
in their grip of the spade I used to crack pond ice.
I see the water back up the spout,
squeezed through valve and pump
into the cistern, back up to the roof
where a thousand thousand raindrops mingled –
back to clouds blown in from the west
back to the recently flooded prairies, back and back...
Again I feel where the water meets my hands,
the slough of soap and sludge from the soup pot,
bits of carrots and greens unstuck by my scrubbing.
The dishwater warms me. I warm the house. The house
warms the world around when I crack the door, listen to see
if the nuthatches and geese are on wing, calling in spring.

© Dick Westheimer

The New World Order

by Dick Westheimer

Dick resides on 50 acres of land in the western reaches of Ohio Appalachia where he’s made a home for 46 years. The farm’s soil, farmed out when he arrived, has made a modest recovery in that time and supports year-'round vegetable gardens, a small orchard, and a burgeoning permanent prairie of native grasses and pollinators. The land is bisected by Shayler Run Creek — a tributary of the Little Miami River – which runs, by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to the Gulf of Mexico.

1.
Mars went missing last night from the gathering along the ecliptic. The moon and
Jupiter and Saturn and Venus arced up from the horizon – kept company with me,
feeling big as all the Earth. I hear only my heartbeat thrubbing from within and the
small sounds of my shallow breath – so long as I don’t pay attention to the road noise
whine and clang of construction equipment working by klieg light over the hillside. If
Mars were here, red and wary, he’d warn that these sounds were the drums of war, tell
stories of old feuds among the gods that were settled with lesser weapons than track-
hoes and long-haul trucks.

2.
I have not seen a cardinal this winter, not heard a chip, chip, chip, chip, cheer from the
trees. There are no finches at the feeder. A solitary jay scrabbles its claws against the
gutter and jeers peevish into the chill air. Winds have blown from the north seven times
in the last seven days. The wind never blows from the north around here. Not a single
house mouse has scrambled from under the stove. Even the cats are confused.

3.
Only the tall trees were damaged in the storm last night - some with human sized limbs
broken – littering the woods like bodies from a great battle, another uprooted and lying
across the lane. The neighbor-men gather with chainsaws in hand and begin to trim.
Some of women haul the cut-loose branches into the thicket while others stand in a
clutch on the hill and speak in mysteries. On the forest floor, the fungi carry on their
work.

© Dick Westheimer

Cohabiting

by Jennifer Phillips

Jennifer lives on the ridge of a terminal moraine, alongside a field and Audubon preserve and a salt marsh overlooking a deep-cut inlet along the Atlantic shore.

I never catch him in his night nest
in the crook of my chimney, a surprising spot
for a young buck to choose to rest,

but a leeward and secluded lair
where he left some of his stiff auburn hairs
there among the crumpled iris spears.

I glimpse him before dawn as he browses
the gardens down our road , lipping frowsy
remains of lilies and hostas, after-season roses.

Or braced in the field's center like a bronze,
only his ears swiveling to sense least stirrings
across milkweeds and seedling firs and sumacs. Once,

I saw him, barely antlered, with his twin.
Now the neighborhood's too tight for the two of them
armed and grown, and he forages alone.

When I wake in my own silence in wee hours
I sense the warm heave of him against the east wall of my house
safer here than he knows. In November's driven showers

I picture the steam lifting from his flanks
curled in the respite of my Northeast-facing fence.
Cautioned by curious Psyche with scorching lamp,

who banished from her bed the one she loved.
I never turn the porch light on to see
my welcome guest who'd vanish, seeing me.

© Jennifer Phillips

Driving in the Dark

by D. Dina Friedman

Dina lives in the Connecticut River Watershed, just below the Mount Holyoke Range in western Massachusetts, former home of the Pocumtuc Nation.

The moon, a mean girl,
swivels her face to the clouds,
leaves us defenseless.

Ribbons of headlight
unveil the asphalt shadows,
enigmatic curves.

The clouds, the mottled
night, a tourniquet stanching
sight. The crickets gone.

Bears sleep in their dens.
We’ve seen their debauchery
with the bird-feeder. 

Signs warn of rockslides.
In the scant, slippery air
we climb the high pass,

car roar cracks the hush,
fingers of fog at our throats,
the tense earth panting.

© D. Dina Friedman

O Terremoto

by Ben Boegehold

Ben lives near a little creek on a mountainous island in the Gulf of Maine.

In the dining room, the innkeeper’s infant son plays on the floor while the old lawyer from the mainland sits at the breakfast table. He speaks Portuguese to the innkeeper, who busies himself with the eggs and coffee, the bread. They switch to English when they see us enter and the old lawyer tells us about the time he visited his cousins in New Bedford. “Do you feel safe living in the States?” he asks. “On the TV everyone seems to have a gun, and everyone is shooting each other.” The innkeeper hands us a book of photos documenting an earthquake that hit the island thirty years before. We examine the wreckage: black and white pictures of stone and stucco buildings reduced to rubble, cracked tiles and mangled cars, field hospitals on the beach. “This whole island,” the lawyer says, gesturing over his juice and coffee. “It’s one big volcano.” The innkeeper smiles, scraping eggs onto a plate. He points through the window at the green mountain rising above the courtyard. “One day,” he says, “It will go boom.” A stray dog paws at the screen door. Even as we look, low clouds from the ocean shroud the peak. The innkeeper’s son shrieks with delight.

© Ben Boegehold

Slush We Hardly See

by Christopher Clauss

Christopher lives on the highlands nestled between the western slope of Mount Monadnock and the Connecticut River, on a hill where the soil is more rock than dirt, but the worms don't seem to mind as much as the gardeners do.

© Christopher Clauss

Microplastics

by Christopher Clauss

Christopher lives on the highlands nestled between the western slope of Mount Monadnock and the Connecticut River, on a hill where the soil is more rock than dirt, but the worms don't seem to mind as much as the gardeners do.

© Christopher Clauss

Mountain House Morning

by Gail Rudd Entrekin

Gail lives amid the Coastal Range east of San Francisco Bay in the San Pablo Bay watershed just above San Pablo Creek on lands of the Chocheno and Karkin Ohlone people.

We come out to the living room in our robes
and the whole room is incandescent white.
Outside the picture window on the landing
the entire sky comes down leisurely and silent –
like when the plum trees all bloomed at once
filling the house with lacy white light, all the tiny
petals wandering downward in their steadfast
devotion to the earth –
But this bloom of white stars,
sifts down heavy and slow, each adding its tiny weight
to the burden on the ground, the fence, each narrow
branch, the top hats on the garbage cans, and the dog
banging now through her door and shaking the melt
onto our feet. The children awake and come down
to the landing and we all stand at the window watching,
smitten to silence by this slow tumbling dance

© Gail Rudd Entrekin

Vasco da Gama

by Hannah Rodabaugh

Hannah is an environmental writer who lives near the Boise River in southwest Idaho. She is passionate about the native plants and birds found in the sagebrush steppe habitat outside her home.

Each spider
is a tiny
Vasco da Gama,
a freaky frisson.
You find them
on walls, walks,
water glasses,
bottles, beetles,
bric-a-brac.
Your back shelf
of books,
old medals,
and dusty,
dilapidated dolls,
all webbed over
with the
explorer’s impulse
to map the world
with thread.
A spider
measures
the world by
what it can
crawl over
in the dark.
Your leg is
a great
felled oak,
your heart,
a beating
granite boulder
to surmount.
Each part of you
has been
summited, claimed
by a spider
in the dark
question mark
of night.

© Hannah Rodabaugh

Accusation

by Andrew Najberg

Andrew lives among the Appalachian foothills near Wolftever Creek on the outskirts of the Tennessee River Valley.

You’re tired of ‘both sides’ talk,
that both sides of the fence
wear the sun the same,

tired of stones tumbling
from mouths like punched teeth
labelled with names
of next month’s name calling,

of asking how many fingers
can be sewn pointing
from their palms to keep them
from tracing up their wrists,

of watching their red-
faced slow-boil at other
Other other other,

while in the real world
bleach reefs harden
and fish starving starves
the bigger fish

and the world nails up
welcome signs
to the New South American
Savannah

and the Arctic Plains
Beachfront property
in the sun in the pipe

as the whole world
shrivels like a grape
too long on the vine

being worn down
by dust blown in hot
winds,

oven temps that press
the A/C so hard
the whole grid fails,

and it’s us against
the wounded world
which we’ve only begun
to hear snarl.

© Andrew Najberg

How we keep tending

by Andrew Najberg

Andrew lives among the Appalachian foothills near Wolftever Creek on the outskirts of the Tennessee River Valley.

We jingled the lock at the gates of plenty,
chains wrapped ‘round the posts
patted for keys at all our pockets.

Behind us, the land of crows and locusts,
scoured fields tilled in rows of rust.
Beyond the fence slats, scattered

critters skitter among brush, nosing worm
burrows and ant hills. There, we whispered,
ones we still eat.

On one horizon, trees gnarl arthritic hands
and supplicate for rain. On the other,
smokestacks and scarecrows bask.

As jackals call twilight, it’s time to shake
the gates. Our children turn to face the setting sun
but do not say about what they cry,

rattle cold hardeness as they blow kisses
at the moon and prayers to the sky.
They don’t know to listen

to our rattling breath and greying hair,
don’t know it’s more than
a long walk back to the fire

© Andrew Najberg

Two Minutes

by Peter Neil Carroll

Peter Neil Carroll lives in the foothills east of Half Moon Bay where the wind off the Pacific keeps the heat waves away.

She married
on the twenty-second day of December,
pleased to begin at the birth
of the solar cycle
that extended light by two minutes
each day—one in the morning by her watch,
one in the evening. Each day
extended, each a little lighter and maybe
if the sun could be trusted
a little warmer. She knew
that was unlikely but why not
hope against doing nothing.
Once while standing at an open window
during a thunderstorm
lightning glanced off a brick wall
hit the spoon in her hand, saved
from any mark by its wood handle.
She had reason to fear darkness
of the short days.
Her marriage encouraged more hope.
She’d been born on an American holiday,
her immigrant parents unsure which one—
Lincoln’s birthday, Washington’s birthday—
but when she found her birth certificate
it showed the fourteenth day of the second month,
Valentine’s Day. No one forgot her birthday.
Every year I bought my mother
a heart-shaped box of chocolates.
Time passed: her sister died young.
Her husband died young. She continued—
—eighty, ninety—still driving a car,
shopping, winding her clocks. Days got shorter,
days got longer. Her two minutes
came or went each day. On a day of
weak sunlight, her body rounded
the solstice circle, December 21.

© Peter Neil Carroll

Horseshoe, Moon

by Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes

Jenevieve lives close to the Long Island Sound and a couple of miles from a nature preserve with acres of coastal forest, sand dunes, and salt marsh. Located near the Hammonasset River, the area is a critical stopover site for migratory birds.

And so, for Limulus polyphemus,
the Atlantic horseshoe crab,
it is true, as it is for all the others—
each existing also as themselves,
before there was a word for crab,
or moon. Or me, or you.
Before their lifeblood filled our vials
to protect us from deadly infections,
and their bodies gave us an essential
ingredient for our vaccines,
Before their spawning grounds fell prey
to development & erosion,
and they were used as bait in traps set
for whelks sold to five-star restaurants,
Before they were overharvested all along
the coast from Cape Cod to Virginia—
Even before their eggs became vital
sustenance for intrepid shorebirds
migrating thousands of miles
on winged journeys to & from the Arctic,
stopping only briefly on the salt flats
in Delaware Bay to refuel—
each becoming part of an ever-brine
ecosystem, an ebb & flow of currents,
of wind, of ocean—Before all this,
& after, too;

When that key-lime moon grows so full
that lunar tides race along the sand,
these ancient mariners will emerge
from the sea, from time immemorial,
in the verdigris bays and estuaries
of the churned-silt, gull-streaked Atlantic
to beach themselves in the coastal coves,
casting their smooth bronze exoskeletons
into the star-tossed surf, a sun-gilded sea
which they have loved without ceasing
for four-hundred million years,
until their soft, blue-blooded under-bodies
and crescent shells like copper canyons
rest once again upon the barnacled shore
made new each May by the crashing waves,
by the full-blossom moon—
to beguile, to charm, & to join
at last in a primordial echo
of the world’s first
windswept
love.

© Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes

Fennec Fox

by Christian Ward

Christian lives close to the river Thames in London. Despite the business of the city, the river, teeming with fish like salmon and a variety of birds, can be incredibly peaceful, and you can wander its banks at low tide.

Cypress trees telegraph
colonisation spots through the dust
and wind. Interconnected
with the Sahara, whatever is felt
is felt together.

Dune buggies slash the air
like scream queens. Quad bikes
tear up the poetry of randomly
generated sand dunes.

The little fox with long, slipper-like ears,
cannot rest, cannot hide.
The desert knows this
and the trees erupt in anger.

An Arabic proverb says "Family
means no one gets left behind or forgotten."
Listen to the sands, hear them weeping
beneath your feet.

© Christian Ward

Entanglement

Fewer than 350 North Atlantic right whales still exist.
(Center for Coastal Studies, Provincetown, MA).

by Maxine Susman

Maxine lives in Kingston, New Jersey, near Heathcote Brook which feeds the Millstone River watershed, on former farmland that was once a Lenape settlement.

At first you don’t mind so much,
the rope caught on some distant
part of you—trailing like the loose tie
of an apron or robe, only a feeling
that you’re getting sloppy,
you’re letting things go,

then it wraps a loop again
around a careless limb,
slows down how you move
a finger, a hand, a leg
but when you try to slough it off

it winds another coil
you find it harder to write, speak, walk
but it’s not crucial, not yet, so far
hobbled you still manage to move,

shuffle, but the rope’s not done with you—
finds a way to tighten across your chest,
around your throat. Difficult
to swallow or breathe.
This has taken months, maybe years,

you didn’t realize while you still had time

© Maxine Susman

Vernacular

by Colette McHale Wisnewski

Colette lives in the Deer Creek Watershed in rural Will County south of Chicago. Her daily walks loop through grasses, prairie plots, wetlands and wooded sanctuaries offering intermittent moments of reflection, a respite from the noise and busyness of the world.

Place forms the vernacular of being,
the soft swish of grass speaking in short haiku
patterning our speech.

Even as the bones of trees speak,
moving limbs as slant marks
breaking moonlight
into shadowed syllables, we understand

other beings punctuate our lives—
the accent of a hawk wing
tipping into the hunt,
an exclamation point of white-tail deer
disappearing into the forest edge.

The emerging animal within insists
we find our voice in the flesh of this place,
keeping the story alive,
speaking its truth
here, now,
in this particular language.

a version of this poem appeared in Fall/Winter 2022 Humana Obscura

© Colette McHale Wisnewski

Hello

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi grew up in Missouri, lived for a while on the West Bank, then a part of Jordan, and now lives in San Antonia, Texas. She says, "San Antonio feels most like home as I have lived here the longest. But everywhere can be home the moment you unpack, make a tiny space that feels agreeable".

Some nights
the rat with pointed teeth
makes his long way back
to the bowl of peaches.
He stands on the dining room table
sinking his tooth
drinking the pulp
of each fruity turned-up face
knowing you will read
this message and scream.
It is his only text,
to take and take in darkness,
to be gone before you awaken
and your giant feet
start creaking the floor.

Where is the mother of the rat?
The father, the shredded nest,
which breath were we taking
when the rat was born,
when he lifted his shivering snout
to rafter and rivet and stone?
I gave him the names of the devil,
seared and screeching names,
I would not enter those rooms
without a stick to guide me,
I leaned on the light, shuddering,
and the moist earth under the house,
the trailing tails of clouds,
said he was in the closet,
the drawer of candles,
his nose was a wick.

How would we live together
with our sad shoes and hideouts,
our lock on the door
and his delicate fingered paws
that could clutch and grip,
his blank slate of fur
and the pillow where we press our faces?
The bed that was a boat is sinking.
And the shores of morning loom up
lined with little shadows,
things we never wanted to be, or meet,
and all the rats are waving hello.

© Naomi Shihab Nye

The Amazon River Dolphin

by Linda Rodriguez

Linda lives in a lushly treed and watered metropolis between rivers and states Kansas and Missouri, both named after the indigenous peoples who were here when the Europeans came with their crosses, guns, and smallpox.

The sudden pink shape
surfacing in black-water lagoons
shocked explorers.
All dolphins share man’s
thumb and fingerbones,
but these also wear his flesh.
When the river overflows
and floods the varzea,
these dolphins travel miles
to splash in the shallows
amongst buttress-roots of giant
rainforest trees.
The waters abate, trapping fish,
dolphins never.

A lamp burning dolphin oil
blinds. At night
the pink-flesh contours melt and blur.
The flipper extends the hidden hand
to lift its woman’s torso
to the land. An Eve,
born each night from the black Amazon,
roams the dark banks for victims
to draw to the water and death.
Taboo to the Indians,
this pink daughter of the river’s magic
always looks, to explorers,
like she’s smiling.

© Linda Rodriguez

Haibun for a Wolf

by RJ Rice

RJ lives in the mountains north of Yellowstone Park in the Gallatin subbasin of the Missouri watershed.

On an early spring walk through the woods I bend down to trace a wolf’s track in the snow.
A number of years ago Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone Park eighty
miles to the south, and have expanded their range northward. Most Montanans do not
like wolves and would exterminate them again if they could. Their motto is Shoot,
Shovel and Shut Up.

The stream flows its shining, quiet sentence of praise.
A wolf, minister of winter, howls its acceptance.
The silence that follows sinks deep in the snow.

© RJ Rice

Once Winter

by Michael Riedell

Michael lives in the Russian River watershed in Ukiah, California.

You don’t know winter is over
until it is, until the sun is rising bright again
over the Mayacamas and a friend
is coming over to help drop the dead birch out front,
and you think the weather
couldn’t be better for the task.
But the tree’s dead mostly from lack of winter, you figure,
lack of rain, the water we’ve seen less of
even in the years we’ve been in this house.
So the sun shines clean in a clear blue sky
and before the day’s done the white European birch
will be firewood stacked on the side of the garage.
Remind me on some cold distant night
when we’re sitting content near the wood stove
and burning this birch
that we brought it down and cut it up
on a beautiful spring day
in the middle of what was once winter.

© Michael Riedell

Proof of Life

by John Glowney

John lives close to the shores of Lake Washington, a ribbon lake formed by the southern flow of the Puget lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet near the end of the Late Pleistocene, looking out at Mt. Rainier, an active stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc.

Smutty prayers at the local bar by boys
who’ve lapsed into men, and night-time’s
a tiny chapel where they drink to what
they don’t feel, to unsolvable love,
the tab overloaded with middle age’s
unsettled scores, the late hour’s bitter
end: flop on the couch, flip on the tube,
the weekend’s bummed-out fade out.
*
Modernity’s apostles enter the past
without knocking, the inhabitants
as brain-washed as 1984,
every recyclable syllable staked
to history’s make-over, every old worry
out of warranty ---
the customer service rep reads his script
from slave ship manifests,
three-fifth’s men and women disembark in chains
at Charleston’s docks, cotton’s scars filigreed
inside their brains like a cattle brand.
We are the problem
for which there is no algorithm.
*
No need to apologize.
It’s bad, people.
It’s bad people.
Sackcloth and ashes for the sea-turtles.
Fleur du mal for the churches.
La mort for the tribes of snails.
Envy for the richest.
Debtor’s prison for the coal miner.
Sun tan lotion for the beaches of Antarctica.
Polar bear steaks for all.
*
Honesty is what we demand.

A tally
of the oceans’ droplets. Tail
the melted iceberg
to its final resting place. Play back
the security camera tape
of the rhino’s horn and the poacher’s
wild night.
*
A sliver of the oldest ice at the south pole
turns into a drop of water,
making a sound no one can bear to hear.
Civilization’s demise bright
as the star of Bethlehem, the elephant
hears the fatal horizon arriving
in shudders of dust, the dung beetle
out of touch with the north star.
The earth is one long ransom note.
We’ve arrived at the knife-
edge of birdsong, earthworm,
and honey-bee, the air littered
with the souls of extinct butterflies.

© John Glowney

Off Season

by Madison Jones

Madison lives in the Pawtuxet River Basin which feeds into the Narragansett Bay Watershed, on the unceded territories of the Niantic, Narragansett, and Mashpee Wampanoag tribes where he writes and works with local community partners to build projects that support social and environmental justice.

We rise early to walk the stone path
along the high ridge. At the edge of town,

an impatient donkey tosses in its saddle,
shifting weight and drawing a foreleg underbelly

like a heron fishing in his stall, watching us
wind up the hillside into morning fog that becomes

a soft dew in the rising sun, offering scant relief
to parched green ruptures along the trail.

Below us, the lava cliffs hurl themselves
into the sheer blue caldera waters,

and the empty little town we’d slept in
resembles nothing more than a postcard

from a time before tourists choked the place,
or ancient volcanic ash scored away the edges,

a fresco from Atlantis with shadows of men
against the whitewashed sheen of cave houses.

A distant cloud interrupts the horizon
as dogs guide donkeys up and down staircases,

and a lone boat draws itself toward the dock.
Beneath them, the volcano turns in its sleep.

© Madison Jones

Animal Contact

by Jennifer Gauthier

Jennifer writes from a small southern city nestled between the Blue Ridge mountains and the mighty James River on land that belonged to the Monacan people. Her study has a verdant view which includes old Southern magnolias, pine, elm, oak and holly trees plus an incredible saucer magnolia. She is regularly serenaded by songbirds such as cardinals, blue jays, Eastern bluebirds, mockingbirds, pileated woodpeckers and a resident pair of red-shouldered hawks.

I.
Last night the power was out
for four hours
A gaping emptiness forced itself on me
with the moon too new to come to
my rescue
I burrowed under blankets to
seek refuge in a dark of my own
making
while sleepless squirrels played
tag along the wires
skittering, dancing, chattering
to each other in their wakeful
bliss
a young buck chewed a frayed
line brought down by the ice
a groundhog burrowed, catching her claws
on a cable buried not deep
enough

II.
When we walk on the land that
was a golf course
now partially converted into a housing development
we stumble across all manner
of dead
For days a full deer carcass lay
wedged under the bridge
spanning a small stream
its stench spreading farther
and farther
Until one day we found
skeletal remains – a spine
and ribs, pelvic bone and skull
with teeth
Then, for days
parts of that skeleton migrated
all over the old golf course:

we came across the pelvis
in a stand of tall golden grass
the skull and spine
tucked into a nook under a tree
then later a jawbone
lying exposed
in the path
Twice I nearly stepped
on tiny furry bodies that looked
like mice
but upon closer inspection revealed
pointed snouts protruding
little nostrils shriveled
hair slick with dew and curled in
on themselves

III.
This is the place we take our COVID
puppy to run and frolic and
chase a red frisbee
After it rains puddles pool
in the grass so deep he can
submerge his
long puppy belly
On unseasonably warm winter days
he lies in the stream
Even in the cold he takes a dip
chases snowballs thrown by
my son
At first he stays within sight
but as he gets older he starts
to stray further and
further away
until one day he bolts –
across the big street heading toward
home
We run to catch him and meet him
as he lopes back to us
On one of his wild roams he
finds the skull and spine
now just a handful of vertebrae

with the skull
wobbling on top
teeth exposed, joints
gnawed down to smooth nubs
strands of muscle still clinging
to the bleached bone
He grabs it and runs down a hill
into a thicket
the skull dangling and
the smell skunky and
foul.

IV.
On the last day of 2019 all
the monkeys in the Krefeld zoo
died
They say Chinese lanterns ignited a blaze
that couldn’t be controlled
It ran wildly
through the enclosures
and the monkeys had
no escape
To think they watched those
lights burning in the sky
clapping and howling
jumping with glee
before the thick smoke obliterated
the glow and
darkness swallowed them
the last breath gulped
in awe

V.
In some cities
animals are roaming deserted streets
boars in Barcelona
pelicans in London
sheep standing in line outside
a deserted McDonald’s
in Wales
and flocks of flamingos painting
Mumbai pink

Perhaps we have colonized their world
for too long
Perhaps they will now take it
back

VI.
Animal contact, they said
Animal contact was the reason for the
disruption
Animal contact
But we are the enemy
the danger
the force that destroys
and to plunge us into darkness
for one night
well, that’s fair warning

© Jennifer Gauthier

February Freeze

by Elizabeth Herron

Elizabeth lives in the Atascadero Creek watershed, twin to the Laguna Watershed, both tributaries to the Russian River in Sonoma County, California, where salmon spawn and where coyotes and black-tailed deer are among her closest neighbors.

One February morning we found
three dead birds in the orchard

not a mark on them, frozen in flight
migrating at night, wings

beating the dark
till they dropped like fallen stars

their bones turned to ice.
I thought of those birds again

when the Eritrean who spent
seven years seeking legal entry

to Switzerland before he stowed away
in the wheel-well of a Boeing 747

was found frozen, fallen
to an English village street.

First published in Free State Review

© Elizabeth Herron

Snowline

by Karen McAferty Morris

Through live oaks with twisted trunks, Karen’s backyard view is Perdido Bay in the Florida panhandle. From her swing overlooking the water, she can watch dolphins and great blue herons.

Only light winds swept across the valley from Hurricane Ridge on our girls-only hike a dozen
summers ago, a thousand miles from home. We posed against the far blue-gray silhouette of
jagged peaks whose generous snowpack lay like a thick frozen ocean surf. A passing hiker took
our picture, our arms crossed, smiling faces bathed in sunglow.

Eager to show this splendor on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula to my husband this past
summer, I led him to the trail where orange and white wildflowers were in freefall down the
shadowed slopes. My chatter stopped abruptly, for an instant I thought I hadn’t remembered it
correctly. Across the valley the snow on the distant ridge-tops nestled only in skimpy patches in
the crags and hollows.

Since then, I have imagined how, through millennia, the winter winds screamed across the valley,
and the peaks trapped the snow that fell and fell onto deep, wide glaciers. Today it is mostly rain
that falls upon them. And what do the winds say now?

My photo from this year’s hike shows the progression of age on my face and in my stance as I
once again pose against the ridge. I can see something restrained in my smile even though
nature’s beauty is all around. We expect time’s erosion on humans, but naively I believed that
winter snows would always be swirling and cascading, replenishing the mantle of those rugged
peaks of my cherished, not-so-long-ago memory. Like something in a fairy tale.

© Karen McAferty Morris