Ripened

There is a time
to plant, wise people know,
a time to tend.
My fingers never took 
to moving earth, opting
instead for convenience.
My generation is the one
of the mail-order catalog.
But nature has moods,
starlight movements, a song
I sometimes pretend to hum.

J Ash Gamble
Ft Myers, 
Florida, US

Went Back

I went back twelve
times, once for each
disciple, once for each
meditation
No time was the same 
for I found I had outgrown
the place of my growing
Old jokes were no longer
humorous, old wounds
itching over with healing,
even some old memories
fading from me.



Kaitlyn Park
Salem, 
Oregon, US

Gist

Wise old professors
ask me for the point
I'm getting to

I have loved populations
on pages, voices
tucked in verses

I have loved learning
about assonance and
Rosenblatt, all the spaces
between reader and text

The point I'm getting
to is I love the way
my son crawls off a page
into reality, how he squirms
with actual delight

Escape into my fiction
is delightful
but the real sounds echoing
around me are the true
gist of my creative life.


Hannah Scarlet
Valdosta,
Georgia, US

Small Backyard

It’s a small backyard
I’ve watched for years
from an upstairs window
while chained to a computer.
Whatever the weather

the old widow was always
planting in spring
watering in summer
raking in fall
shoveling in winter

but the yard’s quiet now
the only traffic
a resident squirrel
heading for the oak
over the tall grass
the widow’s heir
has stopped mowing.

She told her son
you don’t have to garden
but please mow the grass
rake the leaves and
shovel the snow
or I’ll shake you
at midnight
the rest of your life.


Donal Mahoney
donalmahoney@charter.net 

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, US and has had poems published in Ancient Heart Magazine and other publications in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Subtle

Not so subtle
the love of words
like spinning stories
by gaslight

we are the trouble
makers, shaking earth
and sky
with small verses

we are the word
warriors describing
our plight one page
after another.


Angelica Fuse
Los Angeles,
California

Clothesline

Grandmother took all
our history, relics, first
kisses, moments beautiful,
hours tragic, and hung them
on the line in her last
late in life fit of madness.
So now we have to hide
them quickly from our
prying neighbors, or else
explain decades of skeletons
dancing in our closet.


Camille Clark
Atlanta, Georgia
US

Telling Time

I wish I could
tell time to back up
give me some room
Allow me to be young
again

But that is not how
most clocks work, all
parts rushing forward

Maybe heaven, closer
to me now, will just be
best seconds returned.

J Ash Gamble

Ft Myers, Florida,
US.