The candle-light sculpts anew the contours of the vase on the window sill. It holds the silence of this hour where the first sound of an unknown bird is an invitation, a call to song. A call to summon the music of words in your native tongue before the streetlights flick. Somewhere a fox is lurking along an alley where a voice from the past is whispering ‘listen’.

down the chimney
a breath of wind
syllable shift

Diana Webb

A cold clear sky. Denuded boughs and twigs self-etch in bark across the silkweave sheen of the horizon. A bird cuts through the silence with the sound waves of its wings. Damask pale or wrought iron flit of dark. They work in different media these avian creatures unlike their arboreal counterparts adhering to more traditional art.

build up
the crack between
two-layered cloud

Diana Webb

note: title extracted from Shakespeare sonnet 15

On a narrow hallway off to the left of the main stage, a row of private pleasure booth doors swing open and closed. Clicks of tokens in slots and glances of women adjusting themselves between customers.

She leans back; has a moment or two to herself. In the gallery of waist-down Mona Lisas, a pause before the next beholder.

anticipating
the old master
exhibition

Lorraine A Padden

* The title is taken from Shakespeare Sonnet V

A trio of trials. A trio of helpers. A trio of gifts. They follow her through relentless imprints through the longest of nights.

She refuses to cut the fast way out.
She refuses to uncork the chemical fix.
She refuses to call the online hope wrapped round despair.

Instead she conjures the avian creatures from beyond the pane in the darkest hour.

gleam mercurial on the feeder sparrow

skim between cracks a wagtail glimmer

squawk through swoop a gull segues light

at a fingertip
from dust of an unlit wick
a triple flicker

Diana Webb

note: title taken from Shakespeare sonnet 22

His was always a complete circle, difficult to remove. The cup of unfinished coffee would lay on the table for hours. He would place his cup on the exact same spot. There is a permanent stain on the unpolished wood table out on the porch.

spring breeze–
all the wildflowers
on his grave

Mona Bedi

Look! Look! Seeing does not lighten the burden of changes with which light redefines the musculature of envisioned hills and valleys on this side of the Eastern horizon. A pen scratches away that which is not bone from the remaining two dimensions.

a momentary less of now

Stephen Bailey

A time will come in your life when you too will feel like a prisoner. It may be love keeping you boxed in or hate sucking out the air around you. It may be illness clipping your wings, or simply the weight of years … no matter.

Bach cantatas…
unpicking stitches from
the kneeler

Stella Pierides

The Luitpold Bridge in Munich is closed. Climate activists have glued themselves to the road disrupting traffic. They are not afraid of a jail sentence, they say. Part of me yearns to be there with them. Making statements, taking action. Instead, I follow signs for an alternative route, like so many ahead of me, and so many behind. Our long, slow-moving queue snakes around our principles.

on the radio…
instructions for instant
gratification

Stella Pierides