Category: Poetry

in the darkened wood

Rosalie Wessel

oh dear forest, hunchbacked and warty,
bellowing up to meet mother sky.
sprouting its trees like combative limbs,
lashing outwards to gore drifting clouds.
feet thump in patterns, they march like ants
through obedient trails, kept alive by eager hikers.
weeds scratch against the underside of gritty tarmac,
lain to ease pung lumber trucks tackling the growth.
they wheedle in high voices to be let out, to bloom where
they shan’t be torn away. the wild on either edge snickers.
they come from soft earth on the right side of the road,
in the warm welcome of the wooded green,
left to molder and age into whatever weeds are
in raw space, ushered into ferality
and uncrushed existence.

Rosalie Wessel

Seed and Stem

Laurence Levy-Atkinson

All summer long the mango trees shed
The best parts of themselves,
I didn’t even need to scrabble up them
To find it and our mothers screamed from the porch
When we did that anyway.

The ones that fell first were bitter
After you tore the skin off
So we didn’t keep them and threw them away
Seed and stem, into the shade of the farmhouse.
They rotted all summer long

While we climbed and stole the better ones, the newer ones,
Which were sweeter than you could wish for
And sickly when you ate too many.
Which of course we did,
Too young to know any outside limits.

The greener mangoes eventually ripened and fell
But we’d had our fill by then
And they rolled and rotted with the ones before them.
That was after we were gone though,
By a time when we’d eaten all we could

And there was nothing left to climb
Or find. Nothing green anymore.
Or maybe there was and I just wasn’t there
To see it. When you’re plucked seed and stem,
You don’t get a chance to know.

Laurence Levy-Atkinson

Finding Bats in the Spring Wood at Twilight

Barbara A Meier

Inspired by “Finding the Cat in a Spring Night at Midnight” by Pattiann Rogers

It takes a certain hearing, to discern the bat from the bird
in a late afternoon, when the light diminishes Woodrat Mountain.
I hear the swoop of wings beating the soft air
of twilight, humming in the down-sweep
of a dusky afternoon breeze

An aerial battlefield of nectar and mosquito,
with the feeding buzz of the fringed myotis,
and the whir of the dive-bombing male rufous hummingbird.

Bright Venus comes out to play
with the silver fishing hook moon,
Pacific tree frogs bellow their desire in her cold light,
cicadas hammering away at their legs:
a symphony of sound crescendoing
then pianissimo
when they discern my steps into the night.

I lose sight of the magical creatures living in the night.
Pausing the recording of my life in their silence
of fear,
waiting for the confidence to come back;
first, one whir,
a solitary croak,
then joining in an adagio of night wings born at the
edge
of the forest
up to the meadow
sliding gray to brown to black.

Barbara A. Meier

A Mental Maze

Rahul Gaur

Through the shadow-less spiky trees,
I watch you walk, the
graveyard of loss weighing you down
Seagulls screech a mirage of
the end of this murky forest
that you managed to nd
the courage to walk through
The leaves sway in regretful melancholy
as the clouds patiently tease you
with the possibility of wreaking havoc in your world any minute
You find yourself ripping your head apart
in order to conjure up the graveyard in front of you,
as that seems like the only option to end this torture in your mind;
but the seagulls sing now and then to give you hope
that the thunderous clouds scream as false

You have to choose now
No longer can you pretend to hide in this forest
and call it taking on a challenge
because the puzzle is complicating itself,
and the sky is burning away
into darkness that will engulf the forest
And I will be lost trying to
separate you from the forest and the darkness in which you’ll be gone forever

Rahul Gaur

EACH TREE, WHERE IT STANDS

Paula Bonnell

Paula Bonnell

The Dappled Forest

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.

Chuck Madansky