Category: Poetry

Sun Stained

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.

Kelli Lage

Requiem

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

Clay F. Johnson

autumnal swing

Melissa Frentsos

Melissa Frentsos

The Woods are Alive

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.

Adritanaya Tiwari

crow song & solitude

Linda M. Crate

when i walked the woodland path,
a majestic crow welcomed me
into the trees before flying off diagonally,
lost in the lips of the magical sun,
dancing through the trees;
a little honey bee sat on a rock,
carefully sipping on water,
taking extra care not to fall in —
autumn spread her arms out in whispers
of orange and gold, though green
was still the color of choice
for most of the woods;
and the creek glittered and beckoned
to me as she always does
so i danced in both leaves and water,
finding that peace comes in crow song and solitude,
and the joy that nature brings me.

Linda M. Crate

The Rite of Oak and Mistletoe

Cynthia Anne Cashman

Pale is the moonlight
Breaking through the autumn canopy.
Silhouettes of might oaks spread their branches wide.
Those gnarled ancient limbs stir,
Casting living shadows on the sleepy forest floor.

Chilled wind blows in intermittent gusts
Stirring the surround of fallen leaves.
They rustle, take flight, running circles in the night.
We circle round in the breath of this moment.
Embracing rituals of our past, of our people.

Let us have some mutton stew
Under this great sacred oak.
Tip a brew,
While Druids austere don the white coat.

Keep the caldron hot,
As we add to this pot.
The makin’ of a healing potion
Is now in motion.

Under this hailing moon
We come to commune.
Serving the old gods of Celtic core
In fertility rites and antidote lore.

Bring the golden sickle,
Holy mistletoe cut a mickle.
Slaughter the white bulls—two.
Bind the horns through.

Offerings gathered, sacrificed.
The makings of an elixir spiced.
Propitious gifts to hallows bestowed
With hopes of blessin’ from some higher abode.

Days tumble forward until our last sigh.
We look to the sky, those stars, as we tread Mother Earth.
We come now raising our voices
In chants of a prayer—this sacred night.

Cynthia Anne Cashman

The Mushroom Maidens

Avra Margariti

When the first rains pummel the earth
and the rot climbs up the tree trunks
that’s when the maidens are coming.
The villagers deadbolt their doors
and bar their windows
sage and incense ever burning to keep
the spores and tendrils away.

Patchwork shawl around my shoulders
I walk down deserted streets with purpose
to the forest looming sunset-brown against the horizon
past boughs and burrows
under the jade green canopy
never to return as I am.

The mushroom women unearth themselves
under a fat harvest moon
shedding their skin to walk in human form
until the next moon sails the sky
when they will bury themselves back
in amorous clusters under trees and rocks.
It isn’t the first transformation I have witnessed
but this night will mark my maiden burial.
The fuzz on my skin, so very human still, shivers in delight.

I step inside the fairy ring of toadstools
up to my knees in freshly churned earth
then sinking deeper into a pouch
of moist, warm things.
The maidens gather round me in a circle
dancing in a blur of held hands, pulsing gills
and teeth in unusual places
while their fly agaric queen holds herself still and splendid
bare body full of open sores, red hair dewy
with luminescent white growths.
Each time they pass me by giggling like schoolgirls
I am graced with a fungal kiss
supple lips squishy-soft, the taste of a flooded storm cellar;
my tongue chasing their syrupy rot like aged cherry wine.

The fly agaric queen says, You shall be buried
and then you shall be nibbled
and if the forest deems you her daughter
you shall be gifted a skin and born anew.
I sink deeper into the mycelium womb
my limbs turned to fine filaments
sweet, earthly asphyxiation.
My mouth craves one last kiss
one more taste to get me through the darkling solitude
of my very own metamorphosis.
The mushroom maidens stop their dance
growing somber, growing reverent
as their queen kneels down before me
her velvet-scaled lips brushing mine.
She throws the first handful of mossy loam,
her giggling maidens following close behind.
Eyes shut, nestled in the forest’s tender places,
I breathe deep and welcome in my lungs
the spores of change.

Avra Margariti

Petrified

Camille E. Colpitts

dead is
the forest
on birch ashes

a single sparrow
folds into winter
and melts

a wolves’ breath
covers sounds
of petrified leafs

of shallow roots
on borrowed time
come the laughing winds

we think tomorrow lends
the sun an extension
a flawed misprint on the map

without compass are these
wooded pavements
when she cries

here, alone.

Camille E. Colpitts

Holotype

Aaron Sandberg

Aaron Sandberg