Author Archives: Sarah

Palmetto Bluff

Dragonflies above the path, the alligator, and gar
loitering beneath the bridge
their bellies longing for prey.  
Side by side, piece by piece; this harvest of land 

that begs to be seen, the mighty oak 
and cypress, tupelo, and pine
a cathedral of silver shadows, shimmering
in dewy sunlight.  The reach of men to factor 

in the wealth of nature’s story; the glories of God  
where falcons climb, and eagles soar
and naturalists speak of sightings-- 
the timber rattler and beaver; the red fox

the chalk board lectures a kind of fantasy.  
And lurking in the distance, in the far waters
of Daufuskie and Buck islands
the evergreen dreams of youth survive in the shadows.

No cars allowed.  Eons of sediment, the ruins of settlers
in tabby, and stone; oyster shells in the muck 
the countless insects, a mob of  
no see-ums, and hummingbirds quick as light.  

Swallow, and gull, pelicans, and eagles
dolphins in the tides, deer mingling at dusk; 
the marsh trembling with shrimp, and bass.  
The lost and forgotten towns, in the quarry of time; 

the pillars of ancients, long quieted
yet, somehow speaking from the ground.
The Cree and Cherokee and their African brothers
the whisper of sudden spirits, in the trees, still alive.

Keith Melton holds a Master’s in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a BA in Economics and International Studies from the American University. His work has appeared in Amethyst Review, Agape Review, Big City Lit, Compass Rose, Confrontation, Cosmic Daffodil, The Galway Review, The Lyric, Kansas Quarterly, The Miscellany, Monterey Poetry Review and others.

Basho’s Temple Bells

Temple bells die out.
Fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening.
		—Basho

Long ago in some forgotten temple  
where time is measured by the tide, the bells
keep chiming, chiming: die before you die,
before the tide, the final tide, goes out.
 
The orchards on the temple grounds so fragrant,
year in year out, until one spring no blossoms.      
Memories, memories, only they remain.
What was that fragrance? It started with an a—
  
Memories fade—but now, this now is perfect.
Acacia blossoms! Déjà vu—this evening.

John Whitney Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher, assistant editor of Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have been published widely. His two collections, The Stones Keep Watch, and Shiva’s Dance, were published by Kelsay Books. John lives in Colorado and enjoys hiking in the mountains.

Keepsakes

in Fibonacci sequence

Kept       
shells           
gathered 	  
in Gulf Shores 
rise from my nightstand 	                  
mist squallish dreams in saltwater. 								
As hailstones pelt my window pane, I taste ocean spray,
ebb to decades ago sea coast;      
the loon we rescued
is airborne 
in flight,     	
soars
free.	

Jennifer Susan Smith, a retired speech-language pathologist, resides in Rock Spring, Georgia. Her work appears in The Mildred Haun Review, Appalachia Bare, Troublesome Rising Digital Anthology 2025 Collection, and Sunflowers Rising: Poems for Peace Anthology, among others. She holds membership in Chattanooga Writers’ Guild, Poetry Society of Tennessee, and Georgia Poetry Society, and serves as chairman of Alpha Delta Kappa Pages and Pearls Book Club. Jennifer earned a Master of Science Degree in Communicative Disorders from University of Alabama, an Educational Specialist Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Lincoln Memorial University, and a Creative Writing Certificate from Kennesaw State University.

How to Endure These Dark Times


Because the birth of this Earth 
is nothing more nor less than miraculous,
I’ve placed a pot of red impatiens
on the deck next to the red feeder 
full of sugar water—both for the Ruby-

throated hummers who spend summers
here with me. For the Downy wood-
peckers and wrens, I’ve inserted
a suet cake into the wire basket.
And for the finches, I’ve hung up

a thistle sock on one buddleia limb.
Now I wait, anticipate 
their arrival, praying for everyone’s 
safe passage and survival.

Beyond the realities of climate
crisis, genocide, ongoing 
colonialism, political 
division, I make the decision
to celebrate my sense of kinship

with all that exists.
This is how to endure
these dark times: 
Focus on one Yellow-shafted 
Flicker pecking about 

on the lawn. Before long, 
you’ll forget everything else 
as you watch him/her grazing 
and finding just enough 
sustenance for her existence. 

As for my own, 
only when I glimpse 
life’s sacredness revealed in 
non-human creatures, do I 
sense the Creator’s presence, 

and ascend into the hill 
of the Lord to be absorbed 
by His/Her holiness as I witness 
one tiny Blue worshipping 
at the honeysuckle.

Diana Woodcock has authored seven poetry collections, most recently Reverent Flora ~ The Arabian Desert’s Botanical Bounty (Shanti Arts, 2025), Heaven Underfoot (2022 Codhill Press Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist), and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she received the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Poetry Prize for Women for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders. Currently teaching at VCUarts Qatar, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where she researched poetry’s role in the search for an environmental ethic.

Wildfire Sky

I probably shouldn’t be
out in this storm of 
smoke and ash, probably
shouldn’t be on this paved trail as it follows
softly the curve
of that ribbon, the gray river shining beneath
a mirror of wildfires and
cinder.

But where would I be without this place?
I pause on the shore to watch 
as the mallards fly past, their
collective portrait a collage
of emerald, and pine, and
falling rain.

And behind me, a raven lifts from the pale hands
of an aspen tree, his wings leaving trails of ink
across the sky in a crosshatch pattern of 
parchment and fountain pen.

I probably shouldn’t 
be out here, I know, but
give me just a few minutes more
to listen for You. 

Kimberly Beck is a poet from Washington State. She can often be found at a local therapy ranch, caring for a very special herd of Norwegian Fjord Horses. Her work has appeared in Solid Food Press, Ekstasis Magazine, The Penwood Review, Clayjar Review, and more. She is also the author of a poetry collection called Chiaroscuro.

Egyptian Priest Watches the Desert

I see what the gods have meted out
and feel a longing,
a thirst that opens like a leaf   
 
to all the sunken things that ripple
in this hot, white shimmer.
The unquiet harp of the sand,                    
 
its peaks so beveled that
they blow in grains around me.
The ending of a mountain, edgewise on my skin.
 
In the sky the lighted objects roll,
leave on the ground their different darknesses.
The canted shapes I use to measure
 
the many sizes of time.
Then I don't regret the smallness
I am made of, or the unlevel gods.

Patricia Nelson writes Neo Modernist poetry from the San Francisco Bay Area, USA. Her new book, Monster Monologues, is recently out from Fernwood Press.

The Cactus

To continue down this road would doom me
to untraveled, barren land without end,
but as long as I’m longing, I can breathe
with the engine and the joy that’s behind
me, like exhaust. The road becomes unpaved
onward on. This journey is for the saints
in their sleep, in their rest, till they’re awake. 
My poor ride glugs and chugs, a reprobate,
driving while I’m burnt by tears hardening  
on the dash, for I can love an object,
like I love the cactus still sharpening 
on the shoulder of the last sacrament.
        By now our broken city yearns for salt
        that we sprinkled on it, raw and felt.  

Theodore Davis is a poet and musician from Des Moines, Iowa whose work explores how formal meter can swing. His poetry has appeared in Ink Lit Mag and The Limestone Review.

The Bridge of Believing

At first belief is a thick cotton cloud
opaque with tenderness, soft throughout.

Certainty is a heavy stone,
weighing down the plow,
helping dig the soil,
dragging the blade down.

But the in between is a bridge
where you stand
gently pulling threads of cotton
from the cloud,
contemplating the ponderous stone
that gathers weight on the other side.

The in between is something
to behold and to cradle,
something even more sacred
than the thick, tender cloud.

Dolo Diaz is a scientist and poet with roots in Spain, currently residing in California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SLANT, The Summerset Review, ONE ART, Third Wednesday, Rogue Agent, among others. Her debut chapbook, Defiant Devotion, was published by Bottlecap Press. You can find some of her published work at: dolodiaz.com.

Reading the Leaves

Liz texted me a striking
photo that she’d taken: 
a red autumnal maple leaf 
lies on a bed of gray leafmeal 
decay trash. One old brown 
leaf, still well-defined as such
and of a different type
I’m calling oak, just barely
touches fingers with that bigger
central one, whose veins
are forkèd yellow lightning bolts
against a scarlet sky.
Showing at the bottom 
of the frame, a few fresh
green and smaller leaves point up.
The picture is astounding 
in its beauty, which is enough,
and yet I cannot help interpreting 
the image in a personal way, 
as one arranged by fate,
whatever that might be:
I’m of the human stem.

Robert Estes, who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, got his Physics PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and had some interesting times using physics, notably on a couple of US-Italian Space Shuttle missions. Since then, 50-odd of his poems have appeared in literary journals, including The Louisville Review, Gargoyle, Cola Literary Review, The Moth, Viridine Literary, Full House Literary, Masque & Spectacle, Constellations, Tipton Poetry Journal, Anacapa Review, The Madrigal, Book of Matches, and Sierra Nevada Review.

Coherence

After sedation, I wake up in a chapel. My love
has come swelling out of me to fill
the makeshift room of block walls
and curtains like a haze that curls
around us as we sit here, spiriting.
I see us as we are—a Whole of parts—
me in the bed with my heart
beeping through the machines
as I open my eyes, my beloved
in the chair holding me together
along with my purse, the dogs 
at home keeping watch 
by the window—all here in the vapor. 
Even the saltine cracker crumb
on the floor has always been The Body.
It feels like heartbreak and sunrise
and thunder and a drop of rain
falling from the tip of an open flower. 
Like in a dream, I know the layers of being 
through which Love flows unchecked.
If I hold your hand, it is because Love 
carries your pain with you. Listen,
we are always here in the arms of Time—
distinct and one, healed past healing,
loved entirely, beyond knowing.

Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Running Toward Water, forthcoming from Shanti Arts in 2026. Her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, Deep Wild Journal, ONE ART, and other publications. She practices poetry to deepen her awareness of connection and loves to spend time at home and in the wild with her husband, Mike, and their dogs, Oliver and Lewis. Find her on Substack @jennawysongfilbrun or on Instagram @jwfilbrun.