Measured Movement by Kevin Cadwallender

This clock that keeps ticking
From the past to the future
As if time were linear
And we were not transient.

All the photographs mapping
This progression between
Now and then,
Behind and beyond,
Now and not now.

Haunted memories,
Clicked onto paper.
Tricks of light
And chemicals.

These hands that have
Existed consistently,
Insisting on
measured movement.

one sun that keeps burning
from the past to the future
as if stars were immortal
and not as transient as us.

all the astronomy of the ages,
charting the progression between
now and then,
behind and beyond,
now and not now.


Kevin Cadwallender, Scotland 

Not Another Death Poem by Janet Lynn Davis

–for Judy

This poem is not about death;
there are too many of those.
It is about everything else:
the long discussions of when
we were seven or twenty-two;
how we fancied being “great writers”
(both of us, even then);
how we were otherwise unalike,
you protesting in the streets,
      me watching,
you flirting with any and all
who would flirt back,
      me blushing,
you with the wild hair and umber eyes. 

It is about anything but now;
anything but the slow fading,
anything but the white lilies
that will cover you before
the next hint of frost on the meadow. 

Loch Raven Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 2005


Janet Lynn Davis,  Texas, USA

I Tried to Speak Hemingway by Daniel Dowe

I tried to speak Hemingway, but she wanted Faulkner.

I thought my words were spare and evocative and true

Little ominous blasts bursting from staccato notes.

But she heard my monosyllables,

My crafted and considered signposts.

And thought they were just vague and noncommittal

When I thought they were symphonies.

What she didn’t know was that to be florid,

To be languid and verbose,

To unleash the words in a volley of spray and sound,

To give her as many meanings as she might ever want,

To ponder, to cry over, to envelop her, to fill her with atmosphere,

Would rob me of my sense of beginning or end.

I’ve been in those Southern evenings,

Where the sweet kudzu conspires with jasmine

And wisteria and a muggy sunset to addle

Your brain and make you shinny up a sweet dialect

Only a debutante at an orange blossomed cotillion can love.

But I live in a world where straight lines meet straight corners

And up is never down.  

Too many words can mean too many circles,

And too many explanations can leave very deep holes.

I don’t mind lingering in the spaces between and above the words,

I don’t even mind repeating them,

well maybe once.

I just want truth and the certainty that comes from

Not having to know.

I just want the least to do the most.


Daniel Dowe, CT, USA

Whispers by Taiba Khan

After ages it seems
this day has come

You have, I have
recalled some things

And again a desire has cropped up in the heart
On the lips have halted all words

Never were we this helpless


Taiba Khan, India

Poem 1 by Mary Wogan

Art is longing.

A dance with paint,

or words, or marble or stone...

A lipsticked mouth in a kiss

where colour collides

with emotion.

Where birds dare

the journey.

Mary Wogan, Dublin, Ireland

Magic by Taylor Graham

For ten days the old dog growled

and grumbled at the new

pup, and begged us to make her

disappear. She ragged him, 

hung from his ruff, bit him on the ear. 

An old dog only longs 

for quiet, his peaceful cedar-bed, 

a slow amble 

down the grassy swale 

to sleep beside the running stream.

But this morning, he lifts his paw

and bows, as if asking her

a question; looking her life in the eyes -

puppy eyes. Magic,

this old-dog invitation to the dance.


Taylor Graham, California, USA

Snowy Owl by Lisa Pellegrini

Amber pools buried in white plumage,

slits of fire whose warmth

escapes the world's notice,

blink with the grace of a

butterfly in flight.

Talons curled over scaly branches

prepare for their daily dream.

Invisible dancers skip across feathers,

creating miniature fans like

the fins of tropical fish.

He rotates his head toward the blue.

The branch shakes as he departs.

He is a floating sheet of paper,

adrift on a hammock of air,

weightless in a world that

gasps in wonderment one minute

and forgets the next.

 Lisa Pellegrini, USA

A Frame of Snowflakes by A J Huffman

falls in perfect form

                                 ation.  10

for difficulty (this is not their usual

locale).  We watch in wonder as

the weaklings waiver, gather,

cluster across the sand.  Stoically,

they stay

white for only the breath

of a moment before the rising

wind and warming temperatures

return them, in original form, to the waves.

A J Huffman, Florida, USA

Midnight Robin by Maureen Weldon

While the sky shimmers like shot silk,
chimneypots a toothy smile,
I count the pots, 1 2 3 4 5.

On my kitchen table, sheets and sheets

of screwed up poems,
 I will flatten them tomorrow
for shopping lists.

While perfumed smells of hyacinths

bring memories of my mother:
‘they make lovely Christmas presents’
she would say, as she potted and tended …

The evening moves along

as evenings do…
 The moon a half golden bracelet.
The sky cluttered with stars.

All is still, no cars, no trains.

And in this stillness,
the midnight robin sings.

Maureen Weldon, North Wales, UK

Nesting by Paul de Vito

The light filtered lightly through

the window, she was sitting on the sill

waiting for the wind to stop blowing,

it was spring and she was building

her nest in the tree next to my house,

the wind gusted and the window

blew open, in she flew suddenly,

around and around the room,

looking for a place to settle,

finally she spotted my pipe

by my reading chair and swooped

down to dig some tobacco

from the bowl, then up again,

around in flight and out the window

again to her nest in the tree.

Paul de Vito, New York, USA 

editor's note: this poem really caught my eye as I had just recently read about birds using cigarette butts in their nests, you can read more about it here.