Crack of Dawn
By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA crack of dawn —fireflies escapethe jar First published in Chrysanthemum #18, 2015
Anthropocene
By Steve Van AllenCincinnati, Ohio, USA, Earth hawaiian honeycreeper guam flying fox bachman's warbler yellow blossom pearlymussel scioto mad tom mariana fruit bat Gone forever plasticpollutionlogging drilling hate asphalt microplastics cancer Cannot leave soon enough butterfly the only thing movingthis hot afternoon
The Nature of Falling
By Rebecca DrouilhetPicayune, MS, USA Sometimes I still dream of those two old oaks on my grandparent’s old farm. Lightning hit one of them first and then years later, the other. They seemed to be potent symbols of my grandparents, who, ending their last days, were also ending the era of noble peasants tending rural farms. In this era of asphalt and progress, multi-lane highways dominate the landscape. Who remembers a barn full of half-wild kittens or bottle-feeding an orphan calf? new subdivision...a bulldozer buriesthe last of the violets vanishing wilderness…beneath the pale moona snowy owl takes wing forgetting who…
The Last Fable
By Rebecca DrouilhetPicayune, MS, USA At midnight the little mouse lights a flickering candle and dips her heavy quill in ink. Outside her small hovel beneath a pallid moon the ocean is slowly dying. Even here, across a chasm too wide to cross, she can faintly hear the din of eight billion people roaring down ten-lane highways. But no one hears the mouse or heeds her warning. Words appear one by one, stark and black on the ivory parchment, only to fall like tears into an infinity where the ghosts of dead forests and dying shore birds flutter briefly and…
Renascence
By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA No cougars are supposed to roam the Appalachian mountains. They’re supposed to be extinct here, killed off or driven out by logging half a century ago. And yet . . . here and there a single footprint lingers in damp earth, a wisp of hair clings to rusted wire, a blurred snapshot betrays the image of a ghost-cat slipping through shadows. And once, echoing down the mountainside where I stumbled mile after mile over rain-slicked rocks in gathering dusk—once, a long, unearthly scream to pierce the heart. I utter a prayer into the darknessthat enfolds me—may…
The Spinning Wheel
By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA milkweed bloomsat the meadow’s edgeshe waitsfor the monarch’s blessingunder a shattered sky one strand snapsand the tapestry ravels—at duska mockingbird singsthe old crone’s song soft rain fallingthrough a starless nightshe weavesits many-colored threadsinto a shroud for the earth ~Stacking Stones Anthology, summer 2018
Evensong
By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA butterflies flutterfrom the artist’s brushin memoriam—a river of monarchsonce flowed across the sky slow spiralsup the summer sky—scavengerscleansing my mindof its dark residue I follow a pathof spindrift oak leavesto a clearingwhere no cabin ever stood—its hidden hearth my home the daycloses its circlearound mesilver voicesre-enchant the dusk to keep at baythe wolfish dreams,I sleepwith gentle sorrowcradled in my arms ~red lights 15:2, June, 2019
Out of Season
By Doug SylverSeattle, Washington, USA Not that it wasn’t appreciated however unexpected Not that it wasn’t beautiful however out of place Not that it wasn’t surprising however disturbing A cherry tree blossoming full pink fireworks but in December not even winter yet let alone springanother palindromic day 12/11/21 Haiku-worthy cliché as it is but Basho is walking uphill while me down and he’s taking notes on his cell phone noticing the colors nodding to them in their sparseness noticing my noticing nodding to me in my sparseness and this far north next door to Canada a stone’s throw from…
The garden in November
By Doug SylverSeattle, Washington, USA Preparing it for sleep with maple leaves in various stages of decay a foot thick between soil so cold and warming burlap bag blankets with names of coffee companies from around the world Cafe Viejo from El Salvador Cafe Verde from Ecuador Cafe Nuyorican from Puerto Rico It was a tough year to be a tomato cold wet spring hot dry summer records falling everywhere nature falling everywhere raspberries tinged with wildfire smoke gardening gloves tinged with wildfire smoke my eyes tinged with wildfire smoke But there were others successes potatoes hiding underground …
This time
By Doug SylverSeattle, Washington, USA This is when the Quileute tribe calls getting to be the time of no more berries. Earlier sooner this time than ever. It has been prophesied by others that it will last for a time times and half a time. Which time, which times which half a time is this? What happens after it has gotten to be the time and the times of no more berries? And then, for half a time when no one can taste the memories or recall the many times of berries?
As Einstein would say
By Diana WebbLeatherhead, Surrey, UK She is walking back from the supermarket, bag weighed down by difficult choices, when in the day's last rays she sees it. empty snail shell caked with soil the relic Some go to great pains, she recalls, to stop these small land gastropods from underfoot death, by moving them away from pedestrian paths. This one exited naturally, protective architecture unshattered. tick in the boxbetween her fingertips a miracle The creature left its home for her to contemplate under the roof of her own small home on the patch they shared in their mutual home planet earth. silver trace one gleam of…
Beyond the Threshold
By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA the slow beatof an egret’s wingswhiteagainst dark oaks—earth’s annunciation vulturescradled on the windendlessly rockingthe tall pines singboth lullaby and dirge the milk-white fleshof a giant puffballbroken openunder the moonan old woman’s grief with this dropof russet inkfrom the acorn capI write nothing—the oak said it better a rift in the wingof a wild gooseflying headlongthrough gathering duskthe fate of the earth ~red lights 16:1, January 2020 Commentary on "Beyond the Threshold" by Tish Davis Jenny Ward Angyal’s tanka sequence, “Beyond the Threshold” is exquisitely crafted. There is a subtle progression in each of the…
Limb from Limb
By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA morning lightgilding the treetopsas they fallsplinters lodgein my paperbark heart the soundof limbs being brokenas if on a wheel—bloodless the fallen hollies,the heart of pine laid bare the blunt thrustof a bulldozer,the shudderof tissues torn apart—who cries for the earth me too a box turtlecrushed by the skidder’s treadat the edgeof the leftover woodsthis barricade of spiders’ silk plumes of smokerise from the clearcutsilvery as ghoststhe sound of wind chimesbefore the hurricane may the wordsthat tumble from my tonguebe turned to moss—creep over the wounded land,bury the cities of men ~Ribbons 15:1, winter…
Gone
By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA the screamof a red-tailed hawkover the woodwhere dozers wait—my silent cry an echo the giraffeearns a placeon the Red List—Gaia’s ghosthaunts my dreams stacking stonesto build a cairn . . .balancingEarth’s bones,I awaken to vertigo fifty yearsfrom discoveryto extinction—a Pagan reed-warblersings in my heart 4% survivedthe Permian extinction,giving riseto all that lives . . .and to my flightless hope ~Ribbons 13:1, Winter 2017
Night Paddling
By Tish DavisConcord Township, Ohio, USA I show my son how to tie up the food pack. “It keeps the bears away.” He carries me through the darkness to the lake’s edge where my husband is waiting with the canoe. The last time I was in the Boundary Waters I was the teenager. Now I must ride in the center of the boat. My doctor advised against this trip and told me not to expect remission from the disease that is consuming my body. Paddles pull us forward away from the pines and into starlight. Here the moon dissolves into…
Night Heron
By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA small silence –a night heron ensnaredin fishing wire First published in Plum Tree Tavern, 2015
Landfill Overflow
By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA landfill overflow . . .a praying mantisbows its head A version of this haiku was originally published in The Weekly Avocet, #508, August 28, 2022
Manatee
By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA crescent moon –a scarred manatee nurses her calf First published in Every Chicken, Cow, Fish and Frog: Animal Rights Haiku, Robert Epstein and Miriam Wald, editors (Kindle edition), 2017
Hunter Moon
By R. Suresh babuChikmagalur, Karnataka, India hunter moona rhinowithout his horn
Manifesto
By Jenny Ward Angyal Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA jack in his woodland pulpit preaches . . . the right of the rain to nourish the oak the right of the leaf to capture the light, to grow a forest hostelry for a myriad of lives the right of the tree frog to cling to the tree, singing harmonies of moon and shadow the right of the owl to hunt the mouse, the right of the mouse to hide . . . the rhythm of their hearts the right of a woman to kneel by the creek on its way to…