Three Poems by Bob Carlton

Circle/Upon Circle . . . 

Circle
upon circle

down
to the river's edge:

food chain among slime,
the taste of algae
and the dart
of the heron's beak.



The Grass Creeps . . .

The grass creeps
through cracks,
escapes the
paved limits
we try to enforce--

bees and breezes
weave through leaves
in unintended ways

in defiance of
a too rigid set
of lines.



Hydrocycle Freeze-Frame

A soft dripping signals thaw--
by mid-morning winter silence
dissolves in flowing water.

The snow is glazed,
sweating away
its bright body.

The sun shines through a chill
the constant melt
no longer feels.

Wrapped in frigid air
earth warms, softening
to embrace cool trickles
in dark mysteries
where future flurries soak
roots of leafless trees.



Bob Carlton lives and works in Leander, TX.  www.bobcarlton3.weebly.com

A Poem by Brenton Booth

Alpine

Sitting by a small lake
on a mountain watching
the clouds barely pass
over my head
the last person I saw
was a hiker over an
hour ago
nothing and nobody
around
but everything I need
hearing only insects,
birds, and the breeze
all the usual sounds of
my mediocre life in the
city gone for now
hoping it will last
forever.

Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia.  He writes poetry and prose.  Work of his has recently been published in Chiron Review, Mas Tequila Review, Paper and Ink, Bold Monkey and Red Fez.

Three Poems by Michael Wynn

The River

River, I came for a poem but instead,
I watched your swollen muddy waters
Swill out the kingfisher's nest again
Massacring innocence and investment.

Downstream in the brown flow,
Electric blue future, halcyon tomorrow tossed
Mercilessly on your torrent,
The courageous flash of blue
Faded to empty carcasses of hope.

And after the flood,
Your water lay across the fields
Shimmering like newly mopped lino.
Pristine white gulls bobbed serenely on the cold surface.



Encounter

I slewed round the dark bend and screeched a halt.
Atop the verge, eyes flaring, an aloof
Fox paused, a precise paw raised
To cross the cold road for the temptations
Of fields beyond.  Taut body trembling distrust,
He stared defiance back at the harsh lights.
A stand-off; I offered him safe passage,
But what gestures correspond between us?

A sleek, russet spirit ever hunted,
Heir to primal knowledge, from a line who
Wound the first ways through ancient trees and lore,
Before venal mankind laid black metaled
Roads across sylvan order and verdant
Concord.  Invasion and vile suppression.

A nervous glance back to the haven of the hedge,
Weighing the danger from old foe.

I bore the shame of my kind, the guiltless
Fox slid unbowed to safety.  Other nights
I glimpsed him, until one cruel morning,
Matted fur and crow picked eyes, he lay stiff
And broken in the gutter, one raised paw
Twisted in pain and outrage.  I flung him
In the field to hide the crime and because
He belonged there, to decompose on the
Earth he'd roamed, and owned.  Aboriginal,
Oppressed victim of a voracious tribe
That denudes and lays waste the countryside.

Bones and sinew lay moldering;
The heart beat through still air,
It has always beat there.



Morning

Immaculate rising sun
Back-lighting trailing clouds,
Projecting images,
Deserted wet beaches,
Warming rock pooling memories.

The heavy, lumbering, early heron
Splits and languorous new sky,
A lonely daub on a sand painted canvas.

Skeins arrow across saffron leaching into lavender wash,
Synchronized pink signed wings glide down,
While rattling rooks like ink-spots on blotting paper,
Tumble to cold fields.

Michael Wynn is a published short story writer currently completing his first novel from his home in Northamptonshire, England.  Writing provides him with the perfect escape from the mundaneness of a life in sales.

Three Poems by Ruth Z Deming

The Kill

It was done in silence.
No one quite sure
what went down.
Black wings swoop
down from wintry
sky.  The train
moans in the
distance, an
elegy for the
puddle of
gray feathers
that flutter
with the wind.



Who's that Blonde in the Mirror?

Whoever she is, she looks a lot like her father
with the thin lips and worry-crease lines
between her brow.

Whoever she is, she leaves home and drives
to the nature center for a 10:30 nature
walk.  Where is the leader?  The tall man
with the beard?  It is not unthinkable he
has turned into a strutting wild turkey
or a proud antlered deer, rubbing his
itching antlers on some unprotected
bark of tree.

"I'm Ruth," she says to a short
slightly bent-over woman with
fire in her eyes.  Judy doesn't
notice the resemblance to Ruth's
father, who pre-deceased her
as phrased in the obituary ads.

Judy knows her way around the
park.  Where the trails split off
like a wishbone, she chooses
the one to the left.  Wherever
thou goest, Judith!

They stop by the banks of
the rushing creek, stop to
hear the splash of the waters
upon the rocks, timeless as
a ray of sun.

Then they hear it.  Squawking
that takes over the air.
Geese, Canada geese, come
down from Ontario,
Quebec, Nova Scotia, to
their summer home.  What
a view:  rushing waters,
huge boulders, tiny bullfrogs
with bulging eyes--and oh
the sounds the geese hear.

Birds of every variety--the cow bird,
the cuckoo, the scarlet tanager in
its bright Red Riding Hood
feathers.

The two short women
one in Keds, the other in
hiking boots, are drawn
to the three-tiered wood fence
by the warlike sounds,
the raving bellicosity,

This early spring day
dawning with daffodils and
lesser celandine, the geese
play out the millennia-old
mating game.
The whole world turns
upon who mounts whom.
We look up at the sky
and soldier on.



The Miracle of the Cyclamen

You, darling, whose name I can never remember,
you, darling, whose green heart-shaped
leaves are every bit as
lovely as your upturned faces,

Your species, like ours, has drifted from
the Mediterranean over the Atlantic
to be sold for a pittance at the grocery store.

I buy you as a gift for others.  As I was
leaving the store, you called out from your
table.  I heard you as I approached my car.

You reside now with me.

At home you delight me in the kitchen as
I sip my coffee, you dappled blossoms
a satiny blend of purples--I love you
with my eyes, with the gentle water
I pour over you, and touching your
queenly faces, cold to the touch
these wintry morns.

If all goes well, you tubers should
live a long while.  Mayhap till the end of
my days.

This is why you greet me first
thing every morning.  Beauty,
like God, has a way of reaching
our inner spirit we're unaware of
and floating us onward
'til the end of our days.

Ruth Z Deming is a psychotherapist and mental health advocate, has had her poetry published in lit mags including Mad Swirl, Leaves of Ink, and Haunted Waters Press.  She is founder/director of New Directions Support Group for people and families affected by mental illness.  See www.newdirectionssupport.org.  She runs a weekly writing group--the Coffeeshop Writers--at a local cafe.  She lives in Willow Grove, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia.

A Poem by Heather Gelb

Into the Winter Fog

Following the tracks of gazelle
Imprinted on slices of snow
Alongside rivulets of
Icy water trickling downhill.
Eyes down,
Stepping over thick wads of frozen mud,
Boot crunches small pebbled coated with flakes.
Vibrant yellow flowers poking through
Crisp snow absorb my thoughts
Of winter deer until
A distant whispering rush
Tingles my spirit and lifts my eyes.
Beneath the emerging almond blossoms,
Bounding gazelle vanish into the fog.
I follow,
Leaving behind my own tracks.

Heather Gelb feels most fulfilled leaping from hilltop to hilltop as she writes in her recently published memoir about her journey from Rwanda to Israel:  http://www.amazon.com/Hilltop-My-Path-Rwanda-Israel/dp/1937623076/ref=sr_1_52?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441007298&sr-1-52&keywords=rwanda  Her poetry has been published in such diverse works as Poetica Publishing, Deronda Review, Green Panda Press, Pyrokinection and Dead Snakes.

A Poem by Marianne Szlyk

Maryvale Park after the Solstice

On a warm day for January, pond
water clouds over weeds and oak leaves,
ghosts of all I see in summer.

I expected cold, crisp, lifeless water, even
a skim of ice that a glance
would shatter.  I imagine silence, not birds.

Five ducks cluster in a space no
bigger than a puddle.  One duck dabbles
for fish she cannot see.  Others paddle

in place.  The mallards' green heads bring
color to this landscape.  Hidden birds chirp
from the trees.  Above us, a flock

swoops through this park just before dusk.
Today the sun stays past five o'clock.
The new year inches closer to spring.

Marianne Szlyk is a professor at Montgomery College and the editor of The Song Is . . . Recently, she published her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, with Flutter Press.  Her first (Listening to Electric Cambodia, Looking Up at Trees of Heaven) was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press.  Her poems have appeared in Long Exposure, Poppy Road Review, Of/with, bird's thumb, Cacti Fur, Snapping Twig, Contemporary American Voices, Jellyfish Whispers, Napalm and Novocain, Silver Birch Press, and other online and print venues including Kind of a Hurricane Press' anthologies.  She hopes that you will consider sending poetry or flash fiction to The Song Is . . . at thesongis@gmail.com

Three Poems by Ken Allan Dronsfield

Cardinal of Red

"Welcome Poet," said
the Cardinal of Red.
Wind softly stirring,
pine branches swaying;
leaves soaring down,
piling to and fro,
here and there,
upon the ground,
where will they go.
Debris and fodder crunch
loudly under heavy boots;
following paths and trace
as the sun bids us adieu.
Twilight now appears;
at the edge of the Pond;
the Cardinal of Red says,
"Goodbye Poet, til sunrise
whispers upon a new day."



Breathless Heart

Cherish the flamboyance of a chaotic festoon;
surrounded by the bloom of a December rose;
a final heaving exhale of the moon now setting;
the cries of the loveless sobbing out loud.

Lost within this lifeless, bitter cartoon;
vowing silence through weathered piety;
grounded by a charcoal black moving sky;
my impudent world of a shackled life

Following justice to the final bell;
shaving some ice for a tequila sunrise;
dances and glances circling lofty despots;
vulture of consciousness devours my prize.

Ravens working magic using pastel colors.
The insolence inspired by a day long since gone;
walk your pathway standing, never kneel or crawl.
Renewing a warm light within your breathless moan.



Reddish Haze

Nocturne of shadow
rising with a Flamingo
charm of darkness
turns a reddish haze
prone on the pillow
cherished teacup pouts
hushed morning sonnet
a gaze into life's window.

Ken Allan Dronsfield is a Published Poet originally from Hampton New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma.  He has been writing for many years and enjoys hiking, playing guitar and spending time with his cats Merlin and Willa.  His published work can be found at numerous print venues.

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