Blue Heron by Karen Nowviskie

Every year, he returns, the old man,
Solitary, silent.
Just when you've forgotten he exists,
He's in the corner of your eye,
Houdini in grey cape,
Somber, regal, and forbidding.
He appears and we hold our breath,
Whisper to the children,
"Come and see."
A day or two he lingers by the water,
Head down, arms behind his back,
Lost in thought or memory
Of glory in the sun.
Sometimes, his long neck leads
As if he's moving toward the finale
And wherever it is he goes
When he lifts his cape and disappears.




Karen Nowviskie, West Virginia, USA

Annual Count by David Chorlton

In the softly drumming air
between the empty branches
spread against a white winter sun
and the evergreens’ rough bark,
jays shadow woodpeckers
who follow the goldfinches
when the siskins have left nothing
but busy calligraphy
on the dark, loose soil. We are counting
every kinglet, every dove,
to bring the books
in order for the date
which hold the record
of who flies to the edge of a range
and who returns
year after year
to certain corners in the shifting
universe we chart
by the opening, closing,
fanning wide, and folding
back against the body
of wings
with the click and whisper
of feather and bone.


David Chorlton, USA

Blue by Michael Keshigian

There is the ample door
..............to heaven
we anticipate to pass through
.............after a lifetime of good
and there is the blue heron
.............that bathes and stalks
a secluded pond
............for sanctuary.





Michael Keshigian

The Erratic Boulder by Maureen Kingston

uprooted
by force

rode the icy
wave

of the
Laurentide

to a valley

eons from
its home.

A gray
outcrop

cast alone

a geologic
poet

among
the desert’s

smiling
sandstone.


Maureen Kingston, NE, USA

Cold, Wet, and Temporary by Carly Gove

Snowflakes.
So beautiful, so delicate.
Temporary.
They'll all melt, someday.
Nothing can stop it.
But they're pretty in the meantime.
Let's just enjoy them now, okay?
Don't argue.
Just forget about the future.
We'll love them now.
And forget they're doomed.
Our cold,wet, and temporary friends.


Carly Gove, NJ, USA

Three Horses in the Cold by Lori Lipsky

There stood three geldings strong
Side by side
Near the fence—
We paused our hike
In admiration
And they returned our gaze

From the horizontal bars
Of metal pipe fence
Hung neat rows of
Miniature icicles—
A delicate
Crystal valance


Lori Lipsky, Wisconsin, USA

Sparrows in Winter by Gershon Ben-Avraham

I wonder where sparrows go in winter,
When weather turns, and seeds
Sleep silently beneath the frozen fields.

Sitting here beside my fire, I remember how in
Spring they built their home, in a corner of our own,
Beneath the eaves above our bedroom window.

On quiet summer nights I would lie awake
And strain to hear, through the open window,
Sounds of their lives together.

I asked my neighbor if he knew.
Smiling, he said he had never thought on it,
But told me I should remove their nest.

Climbing the ladder propped against the wall, and seeing
Close their work of sticks, and twigs, and string, with their own
Light grey and white feathers woven in, untouched, I left it.

I imagined them somewhere south, sitting in trees Gulf-side,
With a warm Gulf breeze brushing against their breasts,
Their children singing in the branches near them.

And they, their parents, remembering their
Summer home, hoping to return to the one
Sitting still in the eaves above our bedroom window.

I wonder where sparrows go in winter,
When weather turns, and seeds
Sleep silently beneath the frozen fields.



Gershon Ben-Avraham, PA, USA

Snow Pilgrim by Arthur Durkee

Snow drives in around the porch edges. Puffs of whitegrained breath, fallen on uninsulated floors, to drift. The local definition of a blizzard asks how horizontal the snow falls. Green and white the red cardinal's shelter. Gray squirrel, puff-cheeked, clutches the topmost spruce bough, bouncing in the wind, to reach the tree's last cones. Rabbit tracks dash lines between trees.

a quiet rest
in between mountain hikes,
the trailman's lodge


Seeking a festival more quiet, more contemplative, the old poet ties up his knapsack, goes out into the snow, boots laced high over wool, hat and mittens braced upwind. Any direction as good, in this whiteout. Where the road shelfs over the cutbank of river's loop, he stops to watch heavy flakes streak through whipping blackoak branches across the oxbow slope. Memorizing calligraphy of lines of trees clouded behind snow, because too cold for inkstone and brush. Flakes tick on already frozen drifts, winds hiss the boughs, somewhere off upstream a bluejay shrieks. All other silences converge. Walking stick and knapsack, uproad, vanishing. Fade to white.

line of footfalls lost
under fresh fallen snow,
no one left to see




Arthur Durkee, USA

Snowblink by Chris Crittenden

it puts the lie
to the white of the people
who came over
in their big bellied boats.
noon hits the field
and shatters, a bloodblaze
of angels. no puritan robe
this huge or capable
of inciting the sun.

we'd have to strip down
to bone, wash the crimson
off our sternums. our nerve endings
would have to be spliced, frozen,
and bundled with the paucity
of january alders.

if a just god held court,
it would be here, where boots
blemish pale satin, and ravens
seem pangs of the dead.
a place where ghosts can be molded
and presented as blunt-featured
evidence.

shorn logic waits nude,
sheathed in clear steel and unafraid--
as if we could learn
if we stood mute and calm,
tilting prayers to icicles,
swallowed by their truth.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

The Spectacle by William Ogden Haynes

My yellow Labrador puppy
abruptly stops
halfway through his dog door.
He eyes the grey early morning sky
and regards the giant snowflakes
as they slowly fall like white doilies
covering the red Alabama mud.
He emerges into the yard
and licks his back
tasting the snow,
then runs full speed
in a large circle,
snapping at snowflakes in the air.
Stopping in the middle of the yard,
head cocked to one side,
ears peaked with attention,
he looks at me through the kitchen window,
wondering how I can stop to make coffee
on such an amazing day.


William Ogden Haynes, AL, USA