Sandpiper by Mavis Gulliver

She is a speckle of feathers
dappled by shadows
of overhanging grasses,
the only give-away
her black bead eye watching,
watching.
Approach too close
and she’s a flicker of wings,
a smooth arc swinging over water.
When she lands her legs are springs.
She’s a bob, a curtsey,
and a long rippling whistle.
Her nest is a treasure chest,
her eggs satin-glossed, ink sploshed,
smooth as pearls.
On the day her first chick hatches
she’s a demon, a vertical flight
of panic-stricken fluttering,
a crescendo
of frantic warning cries.


Mavis Gulliver, Scotland

Mimi on The Beach by Denis Robillard

You walk the Erie beach
sea shored rejectamenta on wet sand
-- 14 multi-coloured tampon applicators
--sundry jagged bottle pieces, dead fish
--bits of shell, --fish lines, --twigs
--plastic pop can tops,
--a discarded Sunkist orange.
You continue wrapped in cranial knowledge
each molecule, each meme dancing hermeneutically
between toes and brain.
In your head new cells are exploding
conversing on air and water
while tiny specs of poems tour the microscopic universe.
You seek Recyclement here. Regeneration.
Reforestation of the mind.
The moon is in cancer. The sun eclipses all.
The philosopher’s whet stone holds no answers.
Spears of time atoms piece your delicate flesh.
Every society holds fresh jugs of esoteric knowledge.
Each tide here, indeed an endless artesian supply.
Stay here, ponder
the crustaceans of your mind
Glowing and atomic blue.
above arc sky, gulls cackle endlessly
floating
in peaceful cerulean infinity.

Denis Robillard, Ontario, Canada

Lignite by Andrew McCallum Crawford

You dig it up.

It’s been buried for years –
millions of them.
It used to be trees.
They must have been beautiful.

You burn it.

The smoke makes patterns.
Dark blue on sky blue.
People see things.
Beautiful things.
Some people

claim to see trees.

Others stare into the ashes

Trying to rekindle the memory
Of a moment’s warmth.

Andrew McCallum Crawford, Scotland

Under a Tree by Catherine McGuire

Reading a poem,
I am distracted by light
that dapples the page:
dots, splashes,
balloons, bubbles of white
sloping to cream, to shadow blue;
shimmering, pulsing
like soap bubbles in a sink,
lapping and overlapping the page
until they become a poem
I must write down.

Diffuse as soft spots
in a dramatic scene,
they flicker, perhaps alive—
do they dance and play
aware, joyous in their intermingling?
A branch tip intrudes as
silhouette, the one known form;
all else is embryonic,
almost there — light buds
about to bloom.


Catherine McGuire, Oregon, USA

Mahler's Third Symphony by Edward Harsen

Cool days, the pool too cold for a dip,
I am surprised to think that the night
is like a grave, hollow, solidly damp.

I wake up and Mahler is talking to me.
It is quite gibberish, and I wonder
if he is sleep walking.

He is taking forever to get to the point…
trumpeting and straying into old songs.
I sit up when he asks me to sing.

Mahler wants to hear pain and joy,
wants a summer’s relief, flowers
and satyrs’ wine and bread.

I sing for him the sleeping faces
of the children, and the night lightens.
An angel sits with me, no longer Mahler.

The deep cobalt sound of morning,
misterioso and very slowly,
climbs out of my eyes, into my sight.




Edward Harsen, New York, USA

Thirst by Karen Nowviskie

It's in the way the rain falls
in sharp, inexorable drops

until the world is long lines,
stitching sky to earth.

It's in the driving needles
that push hungry fawns to group
and bed beneath the drooping birch.

It's in the urge that makes them
nuzzle sodden earth, returning,

little by little, through a new washed world
in certainty and wonder

in search of tender shoots.

Karen Nowviskie, West Virginia, USA