Less is More by Geralyn Pinto

Less is more, of course                                                                       

That’s why we’ve shown them how 

Bright, bounded bamboo thickets

Are better than sprawling, untidy rain forests.

The zoo workers have even crafted a salt lick

Painstakingly patting sodium chloride

Onto the side of a gash in the earth

Which has municipal water flowing through it

And pretends to be a forest stream.

(The real river that loitered around

Splendid, aimless and occasionally wild

Was long ago domesticated to factory use

So that a distant CEO with greasy charm

Could declare dividends to a grateful public).

Rock surfaces were carefully constructed,

Neat little dens built for delicate young cubs

And a deep ravine dug all around. Just so.

The only thing they did, which you probably

Never saw in raw tiger country,

Was to erect a bright red board

Warning Homo sapien visitors to the park

That this was the lair of Panthera tigris,

Ruthless, lone hunter with a predilection, (sometimes)

For human blood.

Whoever did it hadn’t reckoned that two legs

Are better than four;

Two hands cleverer, faster than paws

Furnished with pads and claws;

One well-organized brain superior to

Brute muscle, olfactory sense and night vision.

So there’s no real need to worry

Because in ourselves we’ve proved, haven’t we,

Beyond a niggle of doubt that

Less is more?

Geralyn Pinto, India

Seals by Byron Beynon

This morning you telephoned
that two seals were swimming
in the Tawe,
they brought with them
innumerable seagrams,
navigable rhapsodies
gleaming with motion,
a lustre of sea-eyes
that floated in fields
where tides registered
global warmth, changeable seasons;
for a moment
they held your breath,
sensed their need to escape
at one with their tidings
delivered across the miracle of unchained waters.


Byron Beynon, Wales, UK

On Things Lost by Nadya Avila Chant

I must not dip my fingers
In the ashes of my sacrifice.
I must not gaze at summer skies
In search of balloons I let go
Long ago
Or beg the wind to return my whispers
As it often does my screams.

No.

And neither must you linger at this dusty altar,
Singing dirges to your lamb,
For I am only borrowed carbon:
I too, am a gift to be returned.

Nadya Avila Chant, USA

Desert Walk by David Chorlton

Our presence leaves no footprints

on desert slopes

built on long spells

without rain,

where we turn over stones,

snag on a waist-high

branch that snaps,

or tread down a clump of grass

as we maneuver to a place

with a better view

of the green-tailed towhee

that flew from a mesquite

and dipped out of sight.

For a person to disappear here

on a bright day like this

would be the natural thing,

leaving nothing but a scent

after passing through

his own mirror without

causing so much as a crack.

David Chorlton, USA

The Female by Lori Lipsky

Demure she sits

light on the branch

poised with confidence

Drab in olive dress she rests

with orange beak

with miniature crest

Demure she perches

waits for him

to approach in brilliant red


Lori Lipsky, Wisconsin, USA

On the Origin of Black Birds by Khara House

It takes hundreds of millions of years to find her

but the dark ones discover their Eve in the fossilized

shallows of a lagoon. They call her Rosetta Stone, Mother

Bird, trace their talons through the delicate impression

of feathers in the limestone, her fine-grained imprint

of bone. Witness her forearms, her fingers, her gentle

curving claws, come as close to a caress as a lover.

She is excavated, brushed clean with warm black

feathers, chipped out bill by bill bit by bit until

her form is fresh, withdrawn from the earth, untombed,

flown to the free birds of the world. It is decided

that she belongs to all. The work begins,

dividing her bones, the hollow stamps of her plumes

pecked into relics, sold for seeds to the cardinals

who tuck them away in reliquaries, avail them

as blessings on the laybirds.

In time the relics fade, the bones decay. All

that is left of the avian eve is her memory, her myth.

An ancient soul that once had a tail, shed to touch

the night sky, spread her wings so deep into the night

that the inky ether wrapped her in its sheen,

set her glory in the morning, rival to the sun,

calls her clandestine, carbon, kohl, lastly crow, after lover.

Khara House, Pennsylvania, USA

Badak api* by Linda Hofke

Lost

in the deep forest,
surrounded by raging fires
an old Malaysian woman drops to

her knees, thrusts her hands outstretched to the
crescent moon and pleads, badak api! badak api!“
but the flames continue to flicker and spread,
dance among the trees, twirling around her.

In the morning, this spot of forest

is reduced to tiny embers and the only trace of her

lies in warmed bones and powdery ash like the

ground-up horn of rhinoceros used by the medicine man

to combat fever and convulsion.
No mythical creature could have saved her

from the inferno. No mighty Sumatran rhinos dared to

answer her call for they must remain hidden

from the poachers who seek to rid them

of their pointy defenses; they have

no time to stamp out evening fires, even if one

desperate soul must succumb to extinction

a bit sooner than they.

*Though there has never been any evidence, there are legends about rhinoceros stamping out fire in Malaysia. This creature is called badak api in Malay. Badak means rhinoceros and api means fire.

Linda Hofke, Germany

Red Squirrel by Chris Crittenden

sputter and chip,
rebuke me with variants
of raucous croon,

you perky piccolo of fuss,
high on a spruce,
helming azure.

if i could shimmy, bristle,
and cackle like you,
besotted by the spirit of

Puck,

would i, too, dash
from my own moods,
a child lost to daredevilry--

and forget the madness
of the mean world
through the quicksilver roan

of my flips?


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

American Goldfinch by Sean Ulman

flapping up flung carve (yellow yo-yo, coal dotted forehead) undulating mathematically culled wave =
lifts and dips on dotted line patrolling overgrown hedgerow hedged w/ crawling nestlings
piping potato chip dip potato chip dip in flight
perched, fluting indigo-bunting-like multi-syllable chimes drain-drowned in impalpable air caverns

Sean Ulman, USA

Moth Stream by Gary Every

The moon shines through my window at midnight
as I toss and turn, unable to sleep
but I am capable of dreaming plenty.
It is not the moon which keeps me awake
nor even the wind
which rattles the leaves in the trees
and shakes my window frame.
It is knowledge which gives me insomnia.
I have recently learned something startling.
Moths, tiny soft fuzzy winged insects,
can somehow sense the direction of the wind
and as the seasons change
so that the moths feel the need to migrate,
all the moths at once,
elevate a mile or two into the sky
where the breeze tosses the tiny airborne creatures
in the direction they wish to go,
hurling them swiftly,
as fast as sixty miles an hour.
How extraordinary it must be
to be so tiny and be flung so fast
and so far.
Do the moths have any grasp
of the massive geography they cover so quickly?
Outside my window nighttime flowers bloom,
trumpeting datura and white yuccas flickering atop their stalks
like candle flames,
beckoning for the moths to drop from the sky.
I lie awake at night unable to sleep
trying to imagine millions of moths
two miles above my bed
soaring through the air at sixty miles an hour,
cursed with insomnia
caught up in a streaming dream of moths.

Gary Every, Arizona, USA