A Prayer / Fog Moment by Diane Webster

A Prayer

Guide me through this crisis season
with grace and patience. When I feel anger
and frustration, let them fly away in a flock
of sparrows spooked by the neighborhood cat.
When I feel anxious, let it shrink like an icicle
thawing on a house eave. When I feel like screaming,
let me hear the coo of a dove like a mantra
soothing my soul. Let me breathe deep the smell
of baking bread, the aroma of pine trees
in a silent forest, a whiff of snow before it falls.
When I feel sad, lift my gaze to the sky
awash in sunset colors. When I feel like
I can't go on, give me strength to walk again.




Fog Moment

She looks out as far as she can see
maybe only as far as the fog allows.
Is that figure familiar?
Is that the right gate?
Is the shape correct to memory?
Fog might be the movie screen
of her remembrances easier
brought forward with a neutral
background. No distractions, sound
muffled like when you held your hands
over your ears when your parents yelled.
Her hand rests against her cheek
smoothing some wrinkles, deepening
others. Doesn’t matter. A breeze tickles
through her hair; strands of memories
almost caught into a scene. She gazes
at the table and follows wood grains over
the edge, back and forth, back and forth
until vertigo circles her head. She closes
her eyes for moments ... past. Raises
her head skyward, toward the horizon —
a sailor’s wife solitary on the beach,
waiting, wondering, searching
for the ship’s mast. Foghorns moan.
Surf rolls in, rolls out without the aid
of seashells echoing in ears from days
long ago. She waits, a figurehead
on a ship’s bow feeling ocean mist
effervescent against her vessel.

Diane Webster lives in western Colorado. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and three times for a Pushcart. Five of her micro-chaps have been published by Origami Poetry Press. Diane's website is: www.dianewebster.com

van Gogh by Jan Darrow

This morning

I hang wheat fields
across the kitchen sky -
paper bright as stars.

In the afternoon
paint
slips through
my fingers
like gold.

Under a whisper of sun
contrasting images
become large
as flowers in a vase -
citrine faces adorned.

Tonight the moon cascades
across a starlit sky
filled with boats beneath
the dark hue
lamp lit
to the naked eye.

Jan Darrow is a Midwest poet that loves the haunting allure of abandoned spaces. She has been published online/print and has been nominated for Sundress Publications Best of the Net. Her book “Autumn Poetry: A Collection for the Season,” (available on Amazon) was recently recommended by Bookstr.

Breakfast in Monmouthshire / Sea Breeze for Sarah by Robert Nisbet

Breakfast in Monmouthshire

Breakfast near the border,

by a spread of October farmland. 

A truck full of kit, a first gig in Bedfordshire,

and agents would be listening to our act, our songs.

We loved those songs, the four of us had crafted them

in a cabin at Devil’s Bridge. We called ourselves

Cambrian Mountain and we sang of land and places.

Suddenly, that morning, just short of Monmouth,

wings lapped above us, jackdaws rising

from the wood behind. We felt, that day,

full of the West, full of Wales.

 

When we made the journey back, in a lenten March,

having been crapped on,

we found a comfort of a kind

in the stillness of the Monmouthshire mud,

the gauntness of the jackdaws’ wood.                 

 

* This poem first appeared in Orbis (UK, 2013)

 

Sea Breeze for Sarah

 

Haunting Sarah’s nostrils, on this harbour front,

come the sniffs of tar, brine, jetsam, gutted fish.

Something here is urgent.

It’s not the classic sea-coast thing,

the Viking blood, the sagas, the passion.

Such gales burst further North maybe

but Sarah, whose life is laid out so much

in paragraphs and at desks,

feels a gentler thing,

maybe a gull’s feather’s thickness more oblique –

a restlessness, reminder of a world

quite close at hand, should she but choose to go there,

a world of wine and candles,

of evening’s cabin images.

 

Sniff the breeze, Sarah,

the seas, the rivers, the restlessness,

and then go back, go home          aware.

 

 

Robert Nisbet is from Wales, a former high school English teacher and college creative writing tutor who has been published widely in the USA, where he has four Pushcart Prize nominations, and in Britain, where his collection, In a Small County, has just been published by Seventh Quarry Press.

Set Aside the Necklace by John Swain

You knot your hands
before the canvas
like a fire rose,
twilight pigments the trees
beneath the sky,
you hold a starfruit
above a vase of carnations,
the sea crashes lavender,
you pour a ewer of water
into the stone basin
and glance
into a jewelry box,
the surface blurs emerald,
you set aside the necklace,
the crescent of your breast
opens at the robe,
we know the long parting
of our solitude remains.

John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France. His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by Origami Poems Project.

Rising and Setting / Heavy Heart by Sushant Thapa

Rising and Setting

I travel around, 
I am looking for myself
In your city. 
The walking melancholy 
Jingles and reaches beyond 
My path. 
I stare at the light,
I am blinded. 
Hope is a map to you
That I have lost. 
I cannot reach what I see. 
Feelings coil, 
They kiss the turmoil, 
Unreal, the flights of fancy 
Land like broken shards. 
The city never sleeps, 
Memories stretch
Like the silent street. 
I forget the name 
Of the horizon, 
To see the hope rise  
And set 
Like the sun.

Heavy Heart 

The sun has lost its charm, 
Time has lost its momentum. 
I lose what I cannot win, 
Beforehand, love does not 
Paint itself 
In our canvas. 
We overthink
Of acceptance in desires 
Sugarcoated in fear of solitude. 
We express not, but 
The heart plays 
Like a trumpet. 
I keep a close watch, 
Your photograph speak 
Of your eyes, 
In passion we have robbed 
Each other, 
Still future escapes 
Like the wind. 
For obvious reasons
And no reason at all,
We travel far from 
Each other. 
My soothing tune
Is your heavy heart. 





Sushant Thapa is a writer and lecturer from Nepal with 10 books to his credit. He holds an M.A. in English from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

Blossoms / The City by James Aitchison

Blossoms

Wind-sprinkled

over my path,

a morning carpet

scenting my day.

From the palette of

the night, softly greeting

my steps, while I —

I, in those same hours

of darkness —

did only sleep. 

          

The City

We wear them down,

our cities.

Shrines to sweat

become neglected, exhausted,

houses gutted of hope,

where factories make 

only defeat.

Downtown, uptown,

two parts of the same

toxic wilderness.

Shops boarded, 

a hollowed-out cinema,

apartment houses with

blind windows that can't see

mini-markets, garish motels, 

and more parking lots than cars.

Still the stubborn urban beast

strives to survive.

And people will say,

"but it has character."

James Aitchison is an Australian author and poet whose work has appeared in the Australian Poetry Anthology, Quadrant, Aesthetica (UK), and Black Poppy Review.

Sunflower Stalk Man by Diane Webster

Beside the koi pond the man/boy lingers
like a head-bowed sunflower stalk
too heavy to worship the sun
in an east to west arc awe.

His clone reflection ripples
away into goldfish flash
into plant roots trailing roots
to cradle, cuddle, soothe.

If he jumps, would he return
to his embryonic womb to finish
growing, receiving the missing gene,
the gene to happiness
to raise his head to meet the sun,
to mature the seeds he houses inside
wishing to emerge to feed friends
like sparrows bending over
a sunflower head drying, ripening
in autumn sun and moon freeze?

Diane Webster's work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. Five micro-chaps have been published by Origami Poetry Press. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com