September Again

This month of your birth
has crept in upon me again,
slipped over the window sill
and into the corner of my room
where a perfect square of moonlight
seems to have up taken residence
and, outside, where the birds,
a whole choir of them, whose names
you never bothered to learn even when
mother recited them over and over again
as she pointed to the secret places
she thought they were hiding
under eaves or in the tangled branches,
are singing their hearts out
as she would always say then
and where now the boisterous cicadas
are joining in that twilight overture

Bodies

after you cut
down the dead
trees
the field yawns
and gives for the first
time in twenty years
a glimpse
of red beyond the shuddering
loblollies—decaying
metal and wood teeth
the remains of man’s work

no life except
a gray body
shell of hollow skin

Spring

Spring Laying in the long grass I am on the frontier! Thumbing my way Through the old growth forest On the banks of the Allagash The whisper of the wind Feels like an ocean I spot a cloud shaped Like the old homestead I am lost In the North Country Swarmed in a psychosis of […]

Political Harvest

Political Harvest Toward the east Through back porch screen Clouds are forming their ranks Against the sun A crow’s distant cawing Gives voice to solitude Worn like a thorny cloak And mocks that final promise Hope and lifeline once Now become more lethal Than foreign shrapnel Pines murmured all night In their high, strange tongue […]

Too Long in the Tropics

Tim Hawkins has lived and traveled widely throughout North America, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America, where he has worked as a journalist, technical writer and teacher in international schools. Today, he lives in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has published more than 100 pieces of poetry and fiction and has been nominated […]

Black-Capped Chickadee

Jeannie E. Roberts has authored four poetry collections and one children’s book. Her most recent collection is The Wingspan of Things, a poetry chapbook (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). She is also the author of Romp and Ceremony, a full-length poetry collection (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Beyond Bulrush, a full-length poetry collection (Lit Fest Press, 2015), and Nature of it […]

Cold Comfort

Cold Comfort I watched a deer standing in the snow— first star of evening caught in the branches of the pines. As dusk fell, its mate bounded into the clearing. They breathed into each other’s noses and I ached to be like them.

Visitant

Literary pilgrims welcome

pines