Misdirecting Merlin by Kevin Cadwallender

if you had known
would you have said?
in all the magic of our
being together,
a darkness.

was it trickery?
did you weave love
into a shawl?
did you wrap
yourself in it
to save you
from darkness?

if I had been Merlin
I could not have cast a spell
to redeem you.
I am the shabbiest
of conjurors
drawing nothing
from the hat but
my hands, gloved
by your darkness now
and infecting all light.

My cloak hangs
on your bedroom door,
stars long dead still visible.





Kevin Cadwallender, Scotland

Bound to Place by Vivian Faith Prescott

Children know haa áan—our land,
ways-of-knowing. Language binds them
to place, my incantations. Fish spawning
in streams, bear cubs birthing in dens.
Children, a seasonal calendar, interwoven.

Daughter born during the Child Moon—Dís yádi

Daughter in the Black Bear Month, S’eek dísi—

..............Month-When-Black-Bear-Cubs-Are-Born

Another daughter born in At gadaxit dísi—

.............The-Birth-Moon-When-Animals-Give-Birth

Son born in At gadaxit yinna dísi—the Breeding Month.

This animal landscape.





Vivian Faith Prescott, Alaska, USA

Lunchtime Dispatch from Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary by Gail Goepfert

The green anole lizards along, puffs out
the dewlap under its neck, inches across
the weathered fence rail, postures
in the shade of his tiny domain.

The pileated woodpecker sports
his red workhat, pries off long slivers of wood in search
of carpenter ants buried in the hollow-topped cypress—
home, kitchen, and drum.

The red-shouldered hawk cruises
the swamp understory, scouts
perches and preens, then performs its sky-dance—
an artist’s flipbook in flight.

The great egret, white in a field
of lettuce greens, edges forward in the shallows,
neck first, zen-master of patience
keen-eyed hunter as it stalks its prey.

The nursery log, fallen cypress
opens light in the canopy—
welcomes seedlings
insects, mosses, and ferns.

I set out hungry and fill my plate.


Gail Goepfert, USA

star ash fire by Joseph Mayo Wristen

looking to understand
what it was like
to have walked here
before star ash fire,

circle of city lights
surrounded by desert rock
pyramids, scorpion shadow
migrating to birth’s field

mountain Blue Bird nesting
against sage nectar time’s
Saquaro forest stretched
across sand painted earth

October moon rising in Sagittarius

sandstone monument
surround by spiritual
red drop wind chants
layered canyon walls
earth’s endless colors
giving us the ability
to recognize the different
choices civilization has made

looking to understand
what it was like
to have walked here
before star ash fire


Joseph Mayo Wristen, USA

Testimony by Brittany Michelson

Do not hold anything I’ve said or done against me
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth
And nothing but the truth
So help me stars
Raising my right hand and placing it
On your heart
I make a solemn oath
To unlearn the sound of you

I do not recall the exact lighting condition that day
Nor the precise weather forecast
On the night
You struck a chord in me
But I know the feeling of tiny wings
Caught in a flame





Brittany Michelson

Waymarks by Mavis Gulliver

Not a goose in sight
but all around are signs
of last night's roosting,
half a mile
of sea-smoothed sand studded
with droppings, the dune edge
flecked with feathers,
scatterings of breast down
heaped in hollows, filling
the small spaces
between sand sedge
and sun-bleached driftwood,
or trapped on tips of marram,
a flurry of restless pennants
fluttering.




Mavis Gulliver, Scotland, UK

The Upkeep of Canaries by Andrew Spacey

No one any longer imagined us as real,
we had to imagine ourselves

Joe Wenderoth

I
Were we once dreaming, like men,
of curly clawed ancestors
who inhaled day, exhaled night
long before skin became song?
Now all of us
are amongst subdued musings chewed innuendo
between gobs and baccy.

The black wheel blurs, silhouettes alter shape,
a gruff choir on concrete finding themselves.
Long gone are children of wax who would melt away
in winter sun, leaving ponies, patterns in grass.

Light is a pinhead or a mirrored star they drop
us towards, like larks in steel introduced to rock.
All continuous song, deep song, transmitting finch.

Work mystifies.
Hold us up against definite warm roof space.
Wait for the planet to twitch.
Breath, breathe, brain, men, main, methane, all the voices
buried in their eyes.
Lemon yellow cravings when we turn to stone.

2
Fleshy Elwell of the Lamps,
(his wife had decamped
years ago)
hums electro

magnetically, speaks hendiadys in the foul air of cabined nights,
sucking coal egg shaped, the mind labyrinthine.

Is it a bit of fresh pippin? Seed time, fink sunflower, sip the dew it’s only awkward legislation.

He brews tea in a kettle that steams we delicate exiles, we’re inspired,
filigreeing apprentices and veterans alike until hessian blankets our sky.
Only the wheel and its umbilical feed this faked existence.

Wings make much of wild whilst we build music
compatible with each colour.

Andrew Spacey

The Dogs by Helen Calcutt

Tonight the heat invites them
to sing: they stir in their tears
the moon’s light,
tonight she is touching on doorsteps
in the streets. They in another place
hear their voices remember. Sounds

crawl to the red edge
like fingers through gates, we invite them
with our silences. our long stares
of the nowhere darkness sounds
replacing our own.
and we could never say

how sad. how beautiful sad
they sing themselves into the dust
of the day’s ruin



Helen Calcutt, Birmingham, UK

Benevolence by Michael Keshigian

Fall approached
with tender kiss
and startling display

gently unhooking
the verdant dress of summer,
who blushed

and dropped soft petals
to the ground,
emerging pale and tired

in the unfamiliar setting,
then curled
to keep herself warm

till a bearded man arrived
with white garb
to comfort her.



Michael Keshigian

Ocean Alone by Allan Peterson

Wasps are hunting under leaves
for the late sleepers
Every glitter is a sound below hearing
or we would go deaf from the ocean alone
aspens and cottonwoods
or the little crossed wires slicing wind
beside the horses





Allan Peterson, USA