art by Steve Hanks
I drift on an opalescent breeze
dreams flower in my hair
They shed in heaps of autumn leaves
rust and gold and green
I am traveling far from childhood
where dreams were never welcome
against transparent skies
I cast my tattered shadow
A Mayan goddess taking flight
thrumming ancient wings
art by Karal Bak
Communing with birds
I open my empty palms
expecting metaphors to light
like fireflies on my life line.
From the back of my eyes
I can see the river Delta,
sweet green tarpaulin stretched
across the hemisphere and those
deep murky waters that reflect
a silver sky.
Fleeting memories disperse like clouds.
Just before sleep I sink deep
into illusory havens,
escape the boredom of life.
Metaphor and Allegory by Ju-Yu Chen
Waiting for you became a ritual,
listening for the sound of your footsteps
in the pounding rain.
The taste of salt still remains
upon my lips where you left it
and in dreams you are evoked
by the wings of seabirds where I have
pressed our memory.
At daybreak the tide retreats without
leaving you at my shore and it is
there I accept loss.
At the hollow of my throat I have etched
your name somehow declaring us sacred.
I’ve unfolded us like origami
Ripped apart our borders
Dissected the shadowed corners
of secrets, forced them into
the light to mourn like the hollow
bones of birds,
I have renamed us where every
memory is not an ache beneath my ribs
and every thought is not an assault on the dead.
My heart is the flush of peony
the color of healing scars.
Thank you Free Verse Revolution!
In the sweet summer
below the rusty fasteners of
an old swing I pump the air
with the spindly legs of childhood,
dream my wide eyed dreams of whirling
pathways to the beckoning sun.
My heart leaps at the sight of a brilliant
rainbow and with small fingers I reach up
to swathe its colors over a bluepalette sky.
Now I know about life,the real truth of it.
Now I know the swing is just freedom.
(copyright H. Rene Hunter)
Summer scatters her shades
in daring colors of red and green
asymmetrical patterns splayed
over fledgling birds taking wing
above silent fields and late blooms
of lilac the deep blush of peony
clinging to a bowing trellis.
A flicker of burnished feathers
dripping with dew flitting above
rolling wheat fields.
Bowed stalks laden with crusty leaves
tender stems beaten to the soil
in need of assurance
the promise of rebirth.
Kabegami Art
Folded beneath white caps
shards of crystals stack in layers.
Seaweed tentacles abandon their grip,
letting go of their bed they are
swept away by the tide snared by sea oats
stranded in the dunes.
A shroud of melon melts down the vista.
Seafaring specters bob in the distance
drifting apparitions that vanish
in the haze, lost to the horizon.
Seagulls hover between sea and sky,
wingtips graze the watery glass,
skimming, plunging, their throaty caws
console the lonely sea.
