by Ed Ahern

Years ago, hunting deer in a forest, I stumbled onto an abandoned farmstead. There were no traces of roads or pathways into the site, no wood or glass or iron. Just the stone cairn of a chimney, and tumbled rock fences, strewn by trees. Connecticut is stoney soil, the clearing and stacking would have been the labor of years.

A chill, soft rain was falling, birds and animals were silent and still. The smell was of sodden leaves and the mold of rotted trees. As I moved cemetery-slowly through the grounds, I wanted to put a name to the ruined labor—the someone or other house, the something or other farm. But there were only age scattered rocks.

And there, where I thought a sitting room might have been, was a neatly stacked cairn, three feet high, that weathering could not have accomplished. A body perhaps, or a keepsake interred at the home it belonged to.

I propped my rifle against a sapling and lifted off the cap stone, intending to burrow down to discovery. And hesitated. And put it back. Undisturbed. What I imagined was more than I could discover, more than I could unearth.
​
I moved on, the farmstead undisturbed and unrecorded. And have long since forgotten its location.

* * *

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had about 500 stories and poems published so far, and ten books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he manages a posse of seven review editors, and as lead editor at Scribes Micro.

by Daniel Rogers

autumn wind
the busker's guitar
out of tune


sunset
the fruit bowl
full of oranges

​
starry night
flicking through
an old diary
​
* * *

Born and raised in Lancashire, England, Daniel moved to Poland in 2015, where he now teaches English as a foreign language. When not divulging the finer points of English grammar, he likes to write.

by Philippa Ramsden

As autumn settles, 
poppies continue to appear 
and bloom, albeit 
under a veil of raindrops.

* * *

Following a career in international development, Philippa Ramsden returned to Scotland somewhat adrift and has now settled in East Lothian. Her writing draws from life and work in Nepal, Mongolia, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Rwanda and her Scottish surroundings.

by Linda M. Crate

let me change like autumn,
transform into my prettiest colors;
let everything dead fade
away into the sky;
bathe me in a golden sunset
that could heal every
broken thing in my soul. 

* * *

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose works you can find at her social media links: 
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter

by Lynn White

​Just a raindrop
falling,
falling into wetness.
A silvery teardrop
which splatters
then disappears
into wetness,
to become invisible
as if by magic.

​* * *

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Visit Lynn's Facebook Poetry Page here. 

by Michael Brockley

The red maple rises above the crowns of pears and serviceberries. Trees an arborist planted in my yard twenty years ago. Now the maple’s roots girdle the trunk, and the bark darkens with stoic resilience. In the evenings, I spread the palms of my hands across the knobs where limbs were trimmed back so a mower could cut the grass beneath the canopy. I ask what songs the neighborhood forest sings through its underground choir. What sustenance might be received from nearby silver maples. From spring’s transient redbuds. My calendar reads mid-October. The tree’s leaves still green. And summer strong. 

* * *

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Prose Poem, Superpresent, and Dreams of Rust and Glass, Volume 2. Poems are forthcoming in Last Stanza Poetry Journal and confetti. ​

by John Grey

Trilling air
in morning fog
flutters the treetops.
 
Then mist lifts,
warblers emerge,
lake mirrors sky
from here
to the mountain foothills
 
And huge vistas
now encompass the small,
from a beetle on a leaf
to the roses in a garden.
 
The opaque has its charms
but clarity gives voice
to depth and distance
 
With light in abundance,
all colors are accounted for.
 
And ghosts are now people
with long lives ahead of them.

* * *

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.

by Joshua St. Claire

summer revival
a cicada
thrums down the sky

cosmic strings
a daddy-long-legs casts shadows
onto asbestos shingles

a common swallowtail floats
through the hydrangea sky
deepening blue

sunset
the horizon bent under
the weight of peaches

dog days
the islands of the Susquehanna
lost in their haze

Shakespeare in the park
a red-winged blackbird becomes
the king of infinite space 

the sky
growing violet at the edges
crowcaw

golden hour
an evening primrose blossoms
into deep time

the press of blue on blue hydrangea moon

* * *
​
Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from Pennsylvania. His haiku have been published broadly including in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Mayfly. His favorite thing to write about is the sky.

by E.C. Traganas

​That look of yours!
As if the whole forest
would bow in your presence 
willows waving their hands 
in salute, larch trees
snapping to attention,
a copper beech in deep,
resplendent curtsy.

How like an unsuspecting moth
was I, a simple speck
on that faraway bark;
Aiming high, flying straight 
and swift like a pin, burning,
falling dead at your feet.

Such were the magnets
of your eyes.

* * *

Author of the debut novel Twelfth House and Shaded Pergola, a collection of short poetry with original illustrations, E.C. Traganas has published in a multitude of literary journals. She enjoys a professional career as a Juilliard-trained concert pianist & composer, and is the founder/director of Woodside Writers, a literary forum based in New York.