Early one morning
still awakening
sitting, pondering
things small and great
of sky and earth
and in-between
what gifts these are
given freely
taken in
and given away
again

Christopher Nielsen is a writer and photographer. Traveling the many back roads has provided a wealth of inspiration out in nature. Working on book of Photo-Poetry.

Grief, not grievance is poetry’s work
Frost quipped—not something to shirk
or shy away from by opting for complaint. Grief,
he also wrote, is a form of patience—an idea not
so easy to get—although, when a bird, thought
extinct for decades, is seen—grief knows some relief,
and, having waited patiently as magma, rises to
be released. One scientist sobbed, after he caught
a glimpse of the woodpecker, flying across
his bow as he paddled the bayou. Hope, I was taught,
is often grief’s midwife, opening the door for loss
to pass through. The second scientist—there were two—
steadied himself by suggesting a typical, field routine.
Each sat, writing down everything they’d just seen.

Charles Weld is a retired mental health counselor/administrator, now working part-time in an agency treating youth, He lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

With our poor diets and premature marriages,
we became witnesses, guilty, and sentenced
to the predictable unfolding of events we didn’t see coming
because we were busy being ourselves, and these were errors so horrible,
they were funny.

So we laughed when it was uncalled for
and cried when something had finally gone right,
toasting to dead parents who had warned us
in all the wrong ways, giggling from the skies,
“We had parents too.”

Amber Weinstock holds a BA in Literature from Binghamton University. After teaching in South Korea and traveling for over a year, she’s returned to Brooklyn, NY to pursue art things and fight the urge to float away like a helium balloon again.

the heat of the sun beats down
on my skin and sweat beads up on my brow
no breeze brushes the surface
no shade reaches to buffer
my breath is hot out—hotter in
air is heavy and thick and bumps into
my face one layer at a time
like a huge culvert of dry heat is squeezed
from a giant cookie press that never runs out
–just pushes hot delirium at me.
another day of parched skin, burning flesh
cells thickening to protect yet aging exponentially
I lean on hot brick in case I faint
and I think of winter

Suzanne S. Eaton is an author and marketing consultant. She has written many corporate stories and marketing materials. She authored “Chinese Herbs,” and has written for various magazines and anthologies. Most recently, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Writer Shed Stories, Seaborne Magazine, The Purpled Nail, The Silent World in Her Vase (TSWHV), Scarlet Leaf Review, and Rue Scribe have selected her work for publication.

He’d always been a solid guy,
Great wife and kids, career and friends.
Thus we had scant idea why
Sobriety came to an end.

His forebears had this problem long,
And therein maybe lies a clue,
But we assumed that he was strong
Enough such evil to eschew.

He seemed OK with all just fine,
And only more good days ahead,
But hidden demons can malign,
Drunk, in an ambulance he sped.

At hospital emergency
An angel knew him, called his wife,
Broke every rule there must be
But very likely saved his life.

Released, resolved he to get well,
And lift himself from the abyss.
With so much good on which to dwell
No daily AA meetings missed.

Through love of family most of all,
Accepting what had been his fate,
He, resurrected from the fall,
Found heightened wisdom on his plate.

Antipathy and anger gone,
For negatives he has no space.
To happiness now where he’s drawn,
A better man in that great place.

Mr. Winick recently began writing poetry at nearly age 65, after concluding a long career as an attorney. Langston Hughes and Dorothy Parker are his primary poetic inspirations.

I play poker for the one-up.

It’s not just the royals who make the best flush.

It’s the Queen of Hearts when Ace of Spades digs her up.

Cayce Bat is a first-year teacher at an inner-city school in Columbia, South Carolina. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and mass communications from the University of South Carolina and a Master of Arts in Teaching in secondary English from Winthrop University.

Workers’ voices carry
black and white newsreel plays
machinery echoes
apparitions of
booming days gone by
when the gin
flowed cotton
in one end
out the other
ginned, compressed, sampled
wrapped and baled
ready for the mill.

Flash forward
present day
fences un-mended
folks abandoned upended
come and go
seeking shelter
empty buildings
forlorn desolation
abundant graffiti
metal arced skeleton
corrugated shell
other voices yell
then trail off
disappearing
in dusty winds. 

Christopher Nielsen is a writer and photographer. Traveling the many back roads has provided a wealth of inspiration out in nature. Working on book of Photo-Poetry.

There will be a deer
bedded down on the snow-covered ground
of the high valley in the rocky mountain
where you caravan to cast his ashes
in this last place. There is a time to mourn.
As you walk to the spot
and begin to speak, it will lift
its long ears and look straight at you.
You will see that eternity is in its heart
as it is in yours. And when the words
are done and the book is closed,
it will stand, its feet secure on the heights.
As you turn to go, it will turn to the rise
and disappear over the ridge.
And when you remember,
There will be a deer.

Michael Lowry is a semi-retired psychiatrist who grew up in Iowa and met and married a Montana girl and moved out west. He enjoys movies and poetry and the mysterious interface between mind and body.

The first surprise was the creek’s unexpected width.
My guidebook had said 80 to 100 feet. Then, I couldn’t see
where to pick up the trail on the other side, and didn’t want to be
aimlessly splashing back and forth over there with
forty pounds on my back, clueless about where to climb out.
And where were the rocks? I’d imagined hopping, boulder
to boulder. What I saw was a sheet of jumpy, fast water
that would mean a mid-calf to knee-deep ford, no doubt.
So, I sat, took off my boots, tied them to my pack,
rolled my socks into a ball, and stuffed it deep into a pocket,
velcroed sandals tightly—stalling—still taken back
by what I’d not foreseen, then eased onto a submerged rock (it
held without wobble) and started sloshing toward a gap
in the far bank’s brush through a rippling wash of whitecap.

Charles Weld is a retired mental health counselor/administrator, now working part-time in an agency treating youth, He lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

I am a bad seed,
For I come from bad apples,
And someday I will grow to be,
In turn, a bad apple tree.

And from that tree,
Bad apples will grow.
And one day that child of mine will ask,
“Mother, like you,
Am I a bad apple too?”

C.G. Nelson has been an avid reader of poetry since she was thirteen years old. Her first loves were Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. C.G. Nelson is a new poet. She went to the University of Washington, where she graduated with a degree in English and Philosophy.