When I first saw you, on a crowded suburban street, I stopped and stared. You shone like a polished jewel in that plain setting. It wasn’t passion that moved me. It was deeper. Like the unexpected discovery of an overwhelming peace.

a new notebook
that brief perfection
before my words

It wasn’t long. I went out of my way to see you again. Everything was darker, downbeat after overnight rain. In that gloomy setting you were somehow plainer too – no longer hypnotic – your brilliance tarnished by myriad bruises.

last year’s bestseller
turning dog-eared pages
with less care

Ah, the might, or might not, each passing moment carries. Life intervened and it was some time before our next encounter. Quite by chance. How I wish I’d missed you. Your twisted, broken beauty was almost too much to behold.

this treasured tome
cradled in my hands
its broken spine

David J Kelly

Like a cliff. A clean-cut cross-section through petrified time. The edifice stares blankly back. Time has not been entirely static. Countless ripples wrinkle the weathered skin of this frozen, vertical sea. Raised coastlines ramble, then dip and disappear into the monochrome monolith. For so many others, an unremarkable wall. Yet, for me, a near-constant companion. Without meaning to, I have attained suspended animation. Waiting is no longer a penance, but an act of defiance.

adding one more notch
to the sum of wasted days
my thumbnail stylus

David J Kelly

Between Trafalgar and Waterloo, clouds drift by as the foreground trees stand tall on a slope of the downs with their fans of leaves, all stilled by the brush. On the horizon ridge a single tree and a clump stand out at a distance.

On time’s horizon a woman sits and watches a dance. John Constable seems to stand close by in the wield of his brush around those grey-blue-off-white shifts he favours so much. Unstilled by the freeze of a hogshair tip, the foreground trees at the base of the hill interlink boughs in the sway of Terpsichore’s use of the storm as entre deux guerres continues to moan…

a bird through and through
the frame of the glass
unseen whisper

Diana Webb

Dark dark skies. The presage of deluge. Under the black and white awning all hell breaks loose  A bombardment of fallen diaphanous droplets weighted like stone. Ice cold, they freeze up the spine. The sudden light. The dazzle. Through the still green tree of life the nigh weightless beings touch down on the earth. They shine transparent as windows to leaves which gild the air behind them.

gleam
across arms and seat
the empty chair

Diana Webb

sleepless moon
the dream I wish to see
yet again 

The new generation meds are a class apart. If you are allergic (to people???) you may or may not get relief but surely you will get a delirious sleep.
I am in a palace with kings and queens for company. My English teacher from school is the guest of honour. She wears a tall hat adorned with the Kohinoor. “Wow, that’s something” I say to myself in my dream. I see people from different timelines. My present company head is the doorman. A gilded sword shines on his armour. I chuckle to myself “Serve him right” I say to my present self. My daughter is a princess and I am a mute spectator to all the glory.
As my shitzu plants slurpy kisses on my nose, I tell the guests that I would be back soon.

 night river the moon shivers in the cold

Mona Bedi

This morning’s cold fog straddles my back fields. Like a cautious horseback rider it eases towards the barnyard enshrouding the barn and outbuildings in grey mist. I am doing morning chores: speaking as I am wont to my hens just released from last evenings lockup into the chicken yard. I’ve tossed a small kitchen bucket of scraps from last night’s dinner leftovers. There’s always a mad scramble when I let them out in their rush to snatch up whatever tasty bits. Some hens have stayed in nest boxes, already laying or keeping an egg from the cold. The fog’s now beginning to retreat to the trees lining the creek bisecting the farm. Two young calves slip out of the still fog-shrouded field heading for the barn where I’ve put out a double scoop of grain and screening pellets for them. I’ve also cut the strings on a bale of hay dropping a couple of flakes into their feeder. The rest of the cows are still invisible out in the far field. I turn back toward the house needing a second cup of coffee to ease the rest of the morning fog away.

awaiting
coffee pot
bubbling

Ed Higgins

In the chicken house this morning. The second one this week. I carry the stiff hen out to the back pasture for the coyotes, since fall is coming on. In spring and summer I’m happier treating turkey vultures. Several of my hens are old–and chickens of course are not ordained for long lives. Commercial hens lay themselves out in one to three years.
After their laying slows with these battery-caged chickens it’s off to the slaughter house and chicken soup–or other worn-out laying hen products. My uncaged, roam free hens can last 6 or 7 years, depending on the breed. Occasionally, one of my barnyard and pasture grazing chicken can reach 12-15 years. Because I am old myself, far beyond any chicken years, I am not indifferent to how my hens slip into eternity. So I do not early-cull my layers when they slow down, or stop laying altogether. This hen I am carrying to the back field has her dignity still intact, if no longer her well-being.

wind ruffled
feathers
hen unriled

Ed Higgins

A dancer is always naked— When clothed has
forgotten is a dancer. There are only clothes
then. And a head. Like caught committing a
crime. Like face vanished become body and is
planning a crime. Moving about a subway of the
earth. With its wrapped-around map fallen off.

slipping into the sea exposed cliff

Vishal Prabhu