The Greenness
By Danny P. BarbareSimpsonville, South Carolina Feelingthefirstsun isthebeginningofthegreennessinthegrassandtrees itisthehappiness,theunfurlingofthenew asifadreamhasjusttakenroot.
The Old Road to Asheville
By Danny P. BarbareSimpsonville, South Carolina Deep in the valleyis where I find my peace,where the mountain laurel growsalong a winding roadof sun-split treesand a stone bridge.
SUNRISE, IN A RABBIT HOLE
By Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan SUNRISE, IN A RABBIT HOLE available on Amazon. I expected something more grandiose than this rusty little gate with a broken latch. Maybe not grandiose, given the early emphasis on humility, but anyway something more befitting the occasion, more … revelatory. But here I am in the altogether, naked as the day I was born, though quite a bit more … developed I should guess, wondering whether to wait for someone to let me in or a great voice calling from on high or maybe just the soft bleating of a lamb, or perhaps I am supposed to…
THE MOMENT
By Regina (Gina) PiroskaTasmania, Australia Exhaling, I hear the sound of my breath as I lean into the rising hush. A breeze plays with a bit of puffy down, picks it up, twirling, a vortex along a dusty pathway. A swallow circles the white bit of fluff that whirls this way, then that until finally, in a suspended split-second, the bird snatches the fluff, flying quickly under the eaves of the deserted bank building and deposits it into the newly-made nest. small townthe second-hand shop signsays 'cash only' 2025 - Edited from a published version 2022 (Modern Haiku (print edition) -…
Seagulls
By Regina (Gina) PiroskaTasmania, Australia seagulls gatheron the abandoned trawlera drifting cloud Published Echidna Tracks #15
PTSD and Psalms
Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts Yah is at my right hand, I shall not falter. Maltreatment, disregard, cruelty,abuse, defilement, contaminationdo not go unnoticed,by the corporeal or the incorporeal,whether inflicted uponan individual or a people,a species or an ecosystem,an atmosphere or a planet. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Aftereffectsaftershockscontinuefor years, decades, generations,millennia. Truth springs up from the Earth; justice looks down from heaven. As an individual,I have lived the impact.Among too many peoples,I have seen the devastation. I call to You, my Rock, do not disregard us. Regarding countless speciesI have witnessed disappearance.For ecosystems large and small,I…
Complexity
By Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts sitting by a streamenveloped in subtle autumn beautyfeeling solid ground beneathbreathing invisible life-giving airawareness awakens verdant summertime leavesconceal yellows and orangesredsmaroonsand complexity beyond measure introduced species small and largeexotic flora and faunasuppress more delicate autochthonesof many huessmall and largeand complexity beyond measure death, demolition and destructionhide and inflamegrief and feardespairdesolationand complexity beyond measure rising seas and rampaging wildfiresscreaming winds and persistent droughtovershadow and obliterate connectionto earthy soil and solid rockiron core of earthand complexity beyond measure sitting by a streamwatching beloved children at play quietlyunexpectedlytouching griefbeyond words beyond comprehension beyond endurance that simmers…
One October Morning
By Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts One October morning, the Merlin app on my phoneheardonly a single dark-eyed Junco.Nothing else. My earsheardcars and trucks on the road beside my house,distant heavy machinery, clanging and banging,and a chainsawnot far off.No birds. My imaginationheardthe trills and chatter of the woodland edgeduring the dawn course of spring–cedar waxings, red wing blackbirds,yellowthroats, rose-breasted grosbeaks,and more.So many birds. My imaginationheardthe silence of the woods and meadowspunctuated only by the murmuring wind in the trees,bird calls,animals scuttering in the litterand water tumbling in a rushing creek.Nothing more. My heartheardthe single Junco aching for the absent birdsand filled the…
Some Things Never Change
By Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan I get in line with the seabirds. They seem to be looking at their reflections in the thin film of water behind the retreating wave. So I look down. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit with a snorkel in my left hand. It’s hot, and the water smells like gasoline. A kid runs by and the birds scatter. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit – all alone. a bald tireon a patch of icethe world turns First published in The Other Bunny, January 6, 2025.
The Gardens of Antarctica
By Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan The gardens of Antarctica breathe free. Free of the hideous white. A dense green silence remembers the blinking ice. Dewdrops heavy as stones hung about the neck. The overpowering poetry of tears. summerthe millstonegindingthe donkey First published in Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, publication date November 3, 2025, Cyberwit.com.
Tide Ledger
By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United States We keep a ledger of small losses: one slipper at the pier, two gull nests, ten breaths of air no one thought to save. The ledger rides in the pocket of a coat that remembers salt: buttons looped with a child’s braid, a coin pressed thin as a fossil. Once a year we walk the shoreline and record what the tide returns: a plastic comb, a glass bead, a photograph of a town no longer printed on any map. We bury each entry in a jar and plant a willow above it. The…
Dispatch from the Thinning
By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United States They said our town still had a forest, though it clung to the highway like a frayed sleeve. At dawn the trucks came, counting trunks the way bankers count coins, and left behind a geometry of stumps the birds could not decipher. The library taped a notice to its glass: “Community Meeting. Seeds Needed.” Women arrived with seed packets folded like blessings. Children wrote tree names on scraps of paper, as if naming could mend the thinning air. We planted where runoff carved salt into the soil and hoped the roots could read…
Building a Birdhouse
Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan That stuff is for the birds, the builder says, when I point out the loss of shade where the trees would be. He is coming from a power lunch with the architect, a former tightrope walker in his father’s circus. Seems like there was a discussion about an extension to the go-kart track. Noise pollution, apparently. What about electric karts, I say, and an aviary just before the final turn? Fat chance, he says. That little hole in front, beneath the red-peaked roof, is too small for the kid’s albatross. First published in Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, publication…
Atlas of Small Things
By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United StatesWhen the last map burned,we traced new roads from thumbprints:salt in the seams,a country stitched by small hands.A child learns the coastby listening for gulls;an older woman counts orchardsthe way she once counted prayers.Every mouth carries a river’s memory:names of fish, the taste of rain.We lift the globe like a bowl,tilt it until teaspoons of lightslide into the cracked placesand teach the woundshow to flower.
A Southern Woman Nails Up Her Theses
Rebecca DrouilhetPicayune, Mississippi, USA I have an announcement to make: It’s the end of the line for idiotkind. The Civil War ended 157 years ago, and if you can’t understand that, get off my train. I’m going on without you. We need to leave our ancestors in their historical time. Some in our society are trying to resurrect the Confederacy and its symbols, not to honor their ancestors and to learn from them, but to build new nightmares, using the worst of the past to create bizarre new mutations with the potential to destroy the last 157 years of progress…
Skin and Bones
Pegah Rahmati NezhadTehran, Tehran province, Iran skin and bones with a bulging (b)elly African child fed up with kwashiorkor
Depravation Darlings
By Colin JamesMassachusetts The acronym B.L.A.H.written on the clubhouse door,because legends are human.I will follow you anywheresuitably hydrated, then demobbedin the Arizona desert.Behold The Cave Of Reason,much better than a dusty clubhouseand your mother's provincial sandwiches.The sunsets here are dramatic,my headaches and carpal tunnelsoftly pressed between cactus flowers.
The Meaning of Color: Portrait of Else Lasker-Schuler
By Richard WeaverSan Diego, California, USA As the Prince of Thebes, I always dress in silks and bright bangles. You say I am my artliving through the rapt eyes of others. They see Berlin or Munich in my mirror, but look away, embarrassed, confused when I enter a room because I am a Jew. Their laughter chases me down the street. Ridicule, my ungrateful friend, my servant,my only living child, dances alongside me. And now you are dead. First Georg.Now you, Franz. Why you? Why does God . . .This war promised to free us but stains the sky daily with migraines. I curse it and those who…
Geologic Doom
By William DoreskiPeterborough, New Hampshire Ashen silence molds itselfinto the shape of geese driftingon a gray lake. The angleof their wake is acute enoughto suggest they’ll get somewhere, despite their casual poise.Soon they disappear in a mistso fine we can hardly feel itsoak through and reveal our bones.The far shore has faded away. Maybe the planet has erodedso its rough edge approaches uswith threats we can’t understand.Maybe the lake is pouring intothe vacuum of absolute space. You tire of these uncertaintiesand claim we live by maps and chartsthat prove the geologic doomI fear can’t possibly happen.Geese can happen. Loons and…
Floral Derision
By William DoreskiPeterborough New Hampshire Fragrant lilies critique the pond.Subtleties of their punctuationleave us gasping for response. The water is a dirty pane of glass.Looking at rather than through itreveals only dinge and drab. No wonder aquatic disdainextends to dry land where voicessail across wooded places and boomerang back to intellectsthat lack both form and content.The lilies remain so aloof, although rooted in the shallows,that no one considers plucking themto place in ordinary vases in rooms where reckless children roam.The August days simper and preen.The pond water smell of decay although fish and amphibians thrivedespite the threats of climate change.The…