EACH TREE, WHERE IT STANDS
Paula Bonnell
In the old stories, one tree looks just like another
and soon, you are hopelessly lost.
You come to a clearing— a cottage— and your panic melts.
You just feel sheepish, relieved.
Smoke, the sweet smell of barbeque, pours from the roof—
maybe they’ll ask you to lunch. The knocker crumbles like sugar.
Naive to think that things are better, just because
we can see the sun. The old ones knew about shadows,
how night is the shadow of Earth, and the absence of light
is the least of what blooms at dusk.
The forest reveals itself in moist fragrance, quiet tones of rust
and green, in stillness the brilliance of daylight dissolves.
Turn and re-enter the uncertain light,
where your lost heart weeps and your spirit delights.
Kelli Lage
Sun stained moss,
grips the lumberjack’s splendor.
When sunrise stumbles forward
the honeyed earth looks so sweet.
I could bite into the golden ground.
Beneath my fingernails,
dew rests.
My youth mirrored
in the stomping of a school of ants.
Queen Anne’s lace
wraps around me like a nightgown.
A robin’s egg cracks open
and the woodlands rejoice.
Evening slithers in and
sets the horizon ablaze.
Guided home by the light
dancing on the tips of my boots.
I sing prayers
that the moon may melt and
drip into my dreams tonight.
Clay F. Johnson
And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
— Rimbaud
Moon-eyed I sight-read the sky
Divining the stars like bones,
Tracing patterns of star-clouds
I prophesize tree-spirits rise,
Slow-burning, curling wisps of smoke
That float like faceless ghosts
Ascending into darkness
Toward undiscovered universes
Breathing death into Earth’s
Planetary lungs, the fire-clouds
Consume the owl-light & witch-stones,
Untuning the music of the stars
In fluctuating starlight,
Undoing nightingale night-craft
Whose melodies of silver lucidity
Occults the moonlight
Waking from a winter’s torpor
And dreams of magic-root raskovnik—
Called furzepig-grass, or moon-clover,
Unlocking buried secrets divine—
My garden hedgehog would rise
To hear her nightingale sight-read the sky,
Listening enraptured to the night-bird
Singing to the stars of another world
With blueberries & raspberry jam
I fattened my famished hedgie,
And her sleepy, gnomic life
No longer seemed a mystery,
Yet each night she awoke,
Crept out from the shadow
And with upward-gazing eyes
Counted stars & absorbed the night
Until like a rare night-ower
Picked beneath singing starlight,
I plucked my fattened hedgie
From a golem grasscutter’s blades—
Night’s birdsong became requiems,
My hedgehog garden a grave
When I held her mangled death
I lost touch with reality,
For the moon & stars were captured
In the black of her cold, dead eyes,
And when I placed her into the earth
I buried the starry night sky
ISSN 2642-0104 (print)
ISSN 2641-7693 (online)
Founding Editor, Juliette Sebock
in the darkened wood, Rosalie Wessel
crow song & solitude, Linda M. Crate
The Mushroom Maidens, Avra Margariti
Petrified, Camille E. Colpitts
Seed and Stem, Laurence Levy-Atkinson
The Rite of Oak and Mistletoe, Cynthia Anne Cashman
EACH TREE, WHERE IT STANDS, Paula Bonnell
Finding Bats in the Spring Wood at Twilight, Barbara A Meier
The Dappled Forest, Chuck Madansky
The Woods are Alive, Adritanaya Tiwari
autumnal swing, Melissa Frentsos
Nature Sketches, Maria S. Picone
One Night, I Walked into the Woods, Christie Megill
A New England Folk Tale, Sarah D. Meiklejohn
My Shadow’s Shadow, Cheryl Skory Suma
Fiction
Ode to Turkish Delight, Liana Tsang Cohen
Nurse Logs, and Other Lessons from Nature, Maggi McGettigan
Photography
Turkey Trail, Sewanee, TN, Gaby Bedetti
Leaf Falling in the Woods, Gaby Bedetti
LEAFSOAKED IN THE RAIN, Martina Rimbaldo
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE WOODS, Martina Rimbaldo
Henry Clay Estate, Lexington, KY, Gaby Bedetti
HOW DO YOU CALL THE WATERFALL OF LEAVES, Martina Rimbaldo
Floracliff Nature Preserve, Kentucky, Gaby Bedetti
Sunset over Rich MT, GA, Gaby Bedetti
Cabin in the Woods, Interlochen, MI, Gaby Bedetti
Impressionism at the Sinkhole, Gaby Bedetti
In the leadup to woodland, we shared a series of micropoems across social media:
Adritanaya Tiwari
Everyone is asleep,
night falls early out here,
forbidden to go outside past 7,
I settle by the window,
unable to sleep.
This village is called Raa-een,
spelled like Rain but spoken like
what feels like a thing of royalty,
another world, miles from the city.
Stars litter the sky,
and moonlight veils the earth,
tonight,
the woods are alive,
with the sound of crickets
and the throbbing of my heart.
I wouldn’t dare step out,
but the balcony doesn’t seem like a bad idea,
curiosity killed the cat they say,
but in these mountains,
the cats are killers.
They roam the woods,
dark and wild,
sharp and sleek,
a nightmare of unparalleled beauty,
during the day they live
in stories of savagery,
and drop by the village
as the sun sets,
stealing cattle away for supper
and sometimes, babies too.
Somewhere in the darkness
I can see a red flag
fluttering in the moonlight.
Faint ringing of temple bells with the wind,
our gods lie awake at the heart of the mountain,
a hundred stumbles and sighs away.
A little glow catches my eye,
something moves with the shadows
in the verandah next door.
Two bright orbs stare at me,
out under the moon, again,
four limbs stand.
The crickets have stopped singing
and the wind is laying low.
The woods aren’t alive anymore.
I scream.