Andrew Weatherly hears inspiration from dying trees, Hawaiian shirts, fires, and other poets.  He is blessed to live in the hood, teach adults to read, dance in the streets in Asheville, NC, and occasionally slip off on pilgrimages to sacred mountains. He’s been published in BlazeVox, Belle Reve, Axe Factory, Former People, Danse Macabre, Cordite, the Literary Nest, Commonline Journal, Hot News, and Crack the Spine.

Monotropa Uniflora, common name Indian Pipe

the ghost walkers peeped their tiny heads
through the humus dead leaves and wrack
pointing their tiny periscopes to look
up at trees out at bears ambling away
through humans walking along
beyond insects gyrating in the wispy wind
and birds swooping crescendos Beethoven tried to imitate
The underworld poked their ears up through
phantasmal whispermaphones
collecting collisions of feet and rocks
bats’ tongues and mosquitoes
silver roars from steel beasts
consuming the black ribbon of
licorice winding the molehills
The chthonic bided their time
snaking sneaky fingers through living soil
to devour the dead to feed their living
and wait for the call of
the mourning dove dirging to rest in peace
the barred owl’s inquisition in the dark
and the madness of the world
readying to invite forgotten visitors
from a world that emailed sanity to the stars