A Poem by Leilanie Stewart

Reeds
 

On a field trip
my tutor pulled apart a clump
of what looked like rotten seaweed
clinging to a battered rock
but turned out to be
7000 year old reeds,
flattened, paper-thin
and I thought about the people
who busied around,
moulding pots or knapping flint
and may have knelt
on those very reeds
before they folded
into the golden-brown
of their autumn years

 

 

 

Leilanie Stewart's poetry has appeared in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies in the UK and US. She worked as a professional archaeologist in Northern Ireland and her forthcoming pamphlet from Eyewear Publishing, A Model Archaeologist, explores the theme. Her writing blog is at: http:// leilaniestewart.wordpress.com

Two Poems by Miki Byrnes

Flooded Landscape

A landscape lies flat.
Curves, hollows,
Tussocks, fences,
Rolled by an obese weight
of water.  That fell like nails
hammered into the earth.
Now we are but flecks
upon a mirror.  Stubborn marks
where silvering has rubbed through.
Clouds reflect
an unending metallic plain.
Pierced only by spires,
huddled island communities.
Sharp black spikes
of mud-trapped trees.



Lickey Hills

A steep path.  Steps too high for comfort.
Straining calf muscles at each knee-bend, mud-slick in rain.
It rose behind the training center.  Boys hung like apes
on tree strung ropes.  Learned team spirit, rules of convention.
Their shouts twined under thick boughs.  Higher up trees clotted.
A green palisade that blocked road, view, noise.
Pine cones littered ground cushioned upon a million shed needles.
Mottled, fragrant.  Dotted with open lobed cones.  Light fell
in dancing patches.  Flickered over the ground in mirror-ball splashes.
Silence lay pure.  An open mouth into which I fed thoughts,
worries, an expansion of optimism.  That returned to me
chewed into more recognizable shapes.
Going down was best achieved on ones backside.
Hands gripping each steps edge.  To arrive at the road
mucky, nails filled with earth.  Head softly rested.

Miki Byrne began performing her poetry in a Bikers Club.  She has had three collections of poetry published and work included in over 160 respected poetry magazines and anthologies.  Miki has won poetry competitions and has been placed in many others.  She has read on both Radio and TV and judged poetry competitions.  She was a finalist for Gloucester Poet Laureate.  Miki is a member of the charity Arthritis Care's People Bank.  She has been disabled for many years.

A Poem by Sue Neufarth Howard

 SOUNDS LIKE MUSIC

Bamboo grove

amidst the fading forest

defoliating - gold, red,

the sounds of a chorus of

thousands

 

an evening meet-up,

more arriving each minute -

avian chit-chatting while

up high a curious squirrel,

cheek full of walnut, observes.

 

 

 

Sue Neufarth Howard: Poet and visual artist, member - Greater Cincinnati Writers League (GCWL)  and Colerain Artists. Received Third Prize and/or Honorable Mention in several Ohio Poetry Day Contests since 1998. Poems published in Her Limestone Bones: Selections from Lexington (KY) Poetry Month 2013; Pyrokinection and High Coupe online journals; Tic Toc, Storm Cycle, and Gilded Frame Anthologies - Kind of a Hurricane Press; Cattails online journal; AEQAI online magazine; the Journal of Kentucky Studies - 25th Anniversary Edition; the Mid-America Poetry Review; and The Incliner - Cincinnati Art Museum. Poetry chapbooks: TreeScapes, EarthWords, In and Out of the Blue Zoo and Haiku Moments.

Two Poems by Ken L. Jones

Half Formed Lullaby

On this implosion of a morning

There’s something sour and aloof
Something lonely in the guitar notes
That give me chills in the cat lithe garden
That calls me across the fog
Weary February is gilded and serene like an angel
And on the lace of its fine bone china ice fields
I saw you kiss the hill’s melodies
Till I was yearning for the silver dreams
Wherein one hears the confessions of the leaves

Late At Night When No One Is There  

My silver bride bends low colored by the rainbow tint
Of the blackbird atop the old hotel
Who is the dark guardian of my wineskin full of salt wind
That turns my sleep to a snow most deep
Above which the moon unfurls
Where a pulsating starlight brings to fruition
The ripe, ripe seeds of the very long burning log fire
That in my beloved’s fireplace stirs and pops
Till long past daylight and first crowing of the cock
As it slowly awakens every village and farm
In the verdant valley far below
And sends to tasks more repetitious drones less free
Than any in any real beehive that I’ve ever seen

  

You Carry Them With You

Slumber dances just out of reach as my memories form

Harp strings to be plucked by finger’s decades worn
For music has always been my trade winds
Been the skin that carries the tattoos of my deepest stirrings
As they come on me in tidal waves in a manner almost blurring
And like a coral bed discovered for the first time in a cove I’ve never seen
Will lead me to undiscovered lands that are the essence of all dreams

For the past thirty-five years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of poetry.  

 

Three Poems by Neil Ellman

Woods (2)

 

     after the painting by Gerhard Richter 

 

In the woods a lexicon’s

concentric rings

speak ancient dialects

 

of seasons come and gone

broken promises

civilizations’ rise and fall

 

liaisons in the shade

of twisted limbs

names carved in weathered bark

 

of the forgiven and unforgiving

confessions and lies

the birth and death of gods

 

straining to the light

trees endure, survive

to teach the earth its past.

Woods (5)

 

     after the painting by Gerhard Richter

 

Blue and yellow trees

with purple bark

Inhabit a world of black and grey

grow old

grow leaves that shift to red

as they escape this time

this place

along the speed of fall and light

with a reason to survive

the end of time

as blue and yellow trees

that will not die

when the woods grow dark

in the winter of the sun

Woods (10)

 

     after the painting by Gerhard Richter 

 

Who live among the trees

on hallowed ground

in the hollows of the earth

hold communion with            

the gods of wind and rain

who gather in the sediment

of falling leaves

to feed eternity

as if it were their child

who comes to know

that destiny is a tree

that sometimes dies

to live again and again

to command the forest floor.

 

 

 

 

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,000 poems, many of which are ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern and contemporary art, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.