A Shrug in Time by Diane Webster

The bird clicks across the metal roof
in hoppy, hoppy steps to start,
stop, look, start, stop, look
only present in silence
like an almost memory
scratching against my mind
suddenly startled by a fraction of noise
like someone calling my name
but seeing no one.
A shrug in time
forgotten four steps further
down life’s progress.


Diane Webster, CO, USA

Gull Watching by Colin Will

The pitter-patter of little feet
is a gull paddling on the grass
to raise a worm from its deep tunnel
through the threat of rain.

The stare of a gull, unable to blink,
unwilling to turn the head away,
outfaces you every time. The yellow eye,
black pupil, silver eye-ring, challenges.

Red spot on the lower bill
a chick’s target to peck at,
to make the parent throw up
its last catch – fish, chip, pizza crust.

The aggressive wing-joint’s thrust forward,
and I don’t know if in human arms it would be
elbow, wrist or fist. It doesn’t work on us;
we don’t know gull’s language of gestures.

Head down, neck stretched out, the keening call
a yearling makes to beg for food
from a more successful adult,
that’s something we understand.

They’ll watch the eiders dive
then dive on them as they surface,
keen to snatch a morsel of mollusc
before it can be swallowed.

It’s no surprise Hitchcock chose you
for the attack: the strength, sharpness of beak,
all-out and in your face, breaking through glass,
confronting us, from somewhere alien.


Colin Will, Scotland

(at falling tide on Islay) by Louise Bankhead

You can't come from a land
That talks of Soul
Without believing in it
You can't leave dust grey skies
Without missing the bird's trail

It seems to be a light burning under my skin
... It seems to leave me
Every time I open my eyes

But I can't sleep now
Can't erase this taste of life

If the salt on my feet
Won't offer me roots
You'll be my breath

It seems your sun is rising under my skin
I can't renounce it
Even deaf
I hear your music's beat in me

But I can't sleep now
Can't forget what I feel
What I live for...

Let me see heather
Fading with our seasons
And follow the wind
To be free

I know it's there
And it won't release me
That blue fancy
Laid fallow
Like a bold deer
Watching over the sea...


Louise Bankhead, Edinburgh, Scotland 

The Cure by Lenny DellaRocca

There were many birds in my tree,
scarlet and indigo verbs
whose lyric spilled like iodine
into wounds of heat.
Yes, I took them down,
brought them into my car,
into a room for an hour
where they murdered everything
I thought I knew about escape or falling.
Sometimes I imagined us a theater
where I’d watch them
in the floodlights of anxiety and purpose.
Sometimes they just burned
leaving red wing marks on the soft
misplacement of my hands.
There would always be the delicate
removal of names,
replaced with a dainty narcotic
and the rough memory of sky.
They never lived in that tree,
but came to it for reasons
only known by them
and their green wisdom,
the smoke curling from their lavender mouths
like the last thoughts of a man who died
in the middle of his desire.

Lenny DellaRocca,USA

The Death of Trees by Josephine Shaw

When we woke the wind had dropped,
but power out, clock stopped, six huge elms
lay splayed all around the village pond -
two hundred years of swagger drained away.

And we pronounced them dead,
impressed the death of trees seemed
so much bigger than ours could be.
The earth keeps moving.

So memories of heavy horses, brasses shining,
a momentary vogue for Dutch barn building
(sandstone brick, pale Georgian paint),
or Shelley’s local popularity,

the coming and going of damp smoke,
the hug of village life, or young men
mustering for drill beneath the shade
(imagining Kipling, finding Arras),

were all left hanging in a point in space,
soft voices dead, in the unaccustomed sound of quiet.


Josephine Shaw, London, UK

In Between the In-between Moments by Martin Willitts

“Yo no naka” means “the world of betweeness”in Japanese
.

Nothing has decided to Become. The lack of wind

wants to be heard. Before your heart blinks out, it must

shed cherry petals. It hesitates. It plunges

into the unknown where we all must go. It goes

expectantly. What does it know that we don’t?

The sky closes shutters, but some light comes through.

There is the smell of Always. A mountain laments —

fog. A hand tugs at leaving birds.
.

Before you left, you were here; and nothing listened —

the nothing was a pond of light. Light though pinfeathers.

A rustle of air against air.

Many moons were in many raindrops.
.

What is it that casts shadows in between the in-betweeness?

The impermanence flinches and falls.

Everything is attentive to the transient movement between.
.

There are words we must carry beyond what we know.
.

Before before there is nothing in the absence

loudly proclaiming in its silence.


Martin Willitts, USA

Chopin at Nohant by Askold Skalsky

Guests chat and smoke, pacing their day

with masterpieces until October.

They stroll or read, play billiards,

sprawl on sofas, hearing some chords

maunder through the keys

like the breath of watered roses

from his room.

It’s sunny and opens on the best purview,

a circle pond ringed with smooth stones

and two great oaks guarding white shutters

with tendrils of green vine curling 

around the recessed door.

You enter it—

the clock behind the escritoire floats

on its moon-phase calendar under a chandelier

with flaming finials where the summer sostenutos 

come to rest.

And in the evening, like a glimmery star,

the first uncertain version

of a melody. 


Askold Skalsky, Maryland, USA

St Jane by Elaine Pomeransky

Auschwitz, the kiss you didn't have to take, lips eagerly pursed,

Inviting the Nazi tongue to lick

You with gas.

Amongst the mass of strangers you died,

Sacrificed.

Name almost forgotten, because of your gender.

Left .....................................................Right

Left Dumfries to end up on your knees for a race forgotten.

'I have found my life's work' your tune, but the world didn't dance.

No rest in Budapest as you sewed stars of yellow

Onto your chosen children.

Light of Scotland, rejected the Church offering of safe return

Held tightly the hands of those who yearned

Your protection,

Affection enough to lay down your life.

'Even here on the road to Heaven there is a mountain range to climb'

You whispered,

As you were gassed

With a mass of Hungarian women

Such a German chore.

Left.................................................. Right

Left the world on August 16th, 1944.

The only Scot to be slain...martyred Jane.

Remembered only by a sliver of Glasgow glass and plaque,

Yad Vashem, men declared you 'Righteous' 55 years

After you'd died.

No libraries, films, memorials, tutorials

Lest we forget St. Jane

And the day you were crucified.

Elaine Pomeransky, Edinburgh, Scotland

Refugees by Ray Sharp

We carry our sorrows
in tin cups
and leather-bound journals.

Ink tracks the yellowed pages
like foot steps
on a barren plain.

At night
we stir the red coals
of dying fires.

This is what stars
would look like
fallen at our feet.


Ray Sharp, Michigan, USA

Air Defense by Jenny Ward Angyal

Saint Francis’ Satyr—

so rare its cocoa-powder wings

flutter only across a few wet meadows

on a single military base, where fire bombs

lobbed into canebrake make a scuttle of  flames,

open patches of sun where the sedges grow

and the Satyr, guarded only by eyespots,

lays one by one her tiny eggs

the color of new grass. 
.

The meadow over the way

turned white with daisies the summer I was six,

and we wandered for weeks, the dog and I,

linked by garlands and lost

in an ocean of white.  
.

A man with a camera came,

and then a full-page photograph

in Time magazine—the daisies, the laughing dog,

and me—important reasons for effective air defense

in black and white. The year was 1956 but the war

was the one war always being fought

somewhere beyond the edge

of the field of daisies. 
.

Yet somewhere

among the leaves of grass

perhaps a chrysalis—

Jenny Ward Angyal, NC, USA