an occasional squabble breaks out
as baltimore orioles
gobble down grape jelly
but order
is quickly restored
life goes on
Photo: Trystan Roberts
as baltimore orioles
gobble down grape jelly
but order
is quickly restored
life goes on
Photo: Trystan Roberts
... the forgotten dream bows low
... asks the wind for one more summer
Photo by Randall Nyhof
Photographer unknown
... mourning doves sway with the wind
Artwork: Ericamaxine Price
... just greyfeathered sky
... wings of the great blue heron
Photo: Patrick Wolf
... but I never tire of them
river
meadow
bluebells
starlight
home
Image: Nicholas Hely Hutchinson
... the poem that is my life
Photograph by Megan Nash
... rubs his antlers on an empty apple tree
Painting: Jeanie Tomanek
I hold it in my palm
feel the potter's presence
Photographer Unknown
I don't know why they've made me so happy
I can't stop smiling
Photographer Unknown
between the apple tree that's almost deadand the remains of the ramshackle shed
my mother's righteous golden glow
Your note to him on the back
He handed it to me on your front porch
The summer before he died
Insisted I have it
Now you're gone too
And the photo?
It's where it was meant to be
I think he knew that when he gave it to me
a red winged blackbird flits from reed to reed
... and as I carried it to the house it talked to me
... told me it didn't want to be in my collection on the porch
... but with those inside the house / on my bookshelf
... where it now quietly resides
Photograph by Peter James
a poem that begins with grandmothers
ringing the necks of chickens
and ends with sir isaac newton
sitting on a bed
I realize I'd skipped a page
read two poems as one
and that my friends is poetry
sometimes you end up
in a place wholly unexpected
Art by Rodney Hatfield
some days you'd call just to share something
a poem, a song, a story from your childhood
the atacama desert's annual rainfall
there are days I still drive down my road
wondering if you've called
your message blinking out into the universe
... beyond the ice broken river ... coyotes
... songs of spring
Photographer unknown
... I hope they know how much I love them
Image: Polina Washington
he called and asked if I'd read him a poem
the poem I'd sent in a message the night before
the one that says, "no one you love is dying"
we knew it wasn't true
but I read it as though it was
takes me down familiar back roads
to where you once lived
but your house has been torn down
the mailbox is gone / the driveway, overgrown
only the gate remains
across the road
on the far side of the pond
two swans drift
... until one of us is gone, the other left remembering
... you lean back on your elbow, blue bandana wrapped around your head
... I sit cross legged in a long cotton dress
... on the stereo, the sound of silence
Photographer unknown