Author Archives: Sarah

The Stormcock

The night you died,
you planted an acorn in my heart. 
At first, I thought the ache

of all the unsaid words
would choke me 
but the seed was patient —

I watered it with my grief, 
warmed it with the sunlight 
of my longing. 

Spring came, 
a taproot anchored my loss, 
a sapling grew, leaves

opened their wings in my mouth. 
An oak tree flourished
in my head,

songbirds nested there,
the ones that do not fear the dark
and from the highest branch 

I heard a mistle thrush —
it sang through wind,
rain, thunder. 

Elizabeth Barton’s debut poetry pamphlet, If Grief were a Bird, was published by Agenda Editions in 2022. She was a prizewinner in the Shelley Memorial Poetry Competition 2023 and was Highly Commended in the Ver Poets Open Competition 2024. Her poetry has been published in journals such as Agenda, Acumen, Mslexia, The High Window and the podcast Poetry Worth Hearing. She is Stanza rep for Mole Valley Poets and editor of their anthology.

Mi Fu Bowing to the Stone

They say he was mad. Before visiting 
his flesh and blood he would pay his respects 
by bowing to his adopted elder 
brother in the garden: a great huddled 
boulder of gray weathered stone.

People round here are polite. When I came
to the mountain and changed the grass hut’s name 
from The Laughing Place to Stone Nest Dojo, 
no one minded, they laughed, as if I were
another old Madman Mi.

We sit together, Mi and I, and share our art,
sketching the fog with brushes heavy with fog.

Note: Mi Fu (米黻) — or Mi Fei (米芾) — (1051-1107) was an eccentric Chinese painter, poet, and calligrapher of the Song Dynasty, and friend of Su Dungpo (Su Shi). As a painter, he was known for his misty landscapes. As a subject for painting, he is often depicted bowing to a huge stone in the garden, which he was known to address as his elder brother.

Richard Collins is abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he leads Stone Nest Zen Dojo. His recent poetry, which has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and a Pushcart Prize, appears in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, MockingHeart Review, Pensive, Sho Poetry Journal, Think, Urthona: Buddhism and the Arts, and Willows Wept Review. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press). a translation of Taisen Deshimaru’s Autobiography of a Zen Monk (Hohm Press), and In Search of the Hermaphrodite (Tough Poets Press, 2024).

Abundant Seeing

Into the distances of the early morning,
the loose gravels break into golden sediments.
a blue oriole floats over, looking for the tree top.

The half-awake sun is lazy, stirring space and colour,
my two palms meet tenderly in silence under the canopy 
of Madhavi creepers near the Ashram gate.

A lean Santhal boy carries a bamboo stick,
walk across slowly, perhaps in search of two ancient
Chhatim trees,

Dewdrops sparkle on the white hibiscus petals,
in a field of mild sunlight between two Sal trees,
the rays come from far afar and say, ‘See’,

At this exact moment,
dip in anywhere, and delight follows.

Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 31 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry and prose are published across more than one hundred journals and anthologies globally His poems are translated in 18 languages and published in 16 countries. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021 and received a Setu Excellence Award, Pittsburg, in 2020. Recent Credits: One Art Journal, Poetry Breakfast Journal, Verse-Virtual Journal, Setu Journal, Kitaab Journal, Himalayan Diary, Dissident Voice, The Piker Press, Confluence, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Wise Owl Journal and elsewhere.

Mending Words


The Universe whispers.
	      I obey.
	      	      Fresh beginnings, excitement.

	      Pages penned – 
	      	      trails of words to ease –
	      	      	      to reapportion facts, to heal

	      	      mind and soul. Letter folded, 
	      	      	      enveloped,
	      	      	      	      I briefly chanted.

	      Vibrations sent through space and time. 
	      	      These pages offered
	      	      	      to the universe	

to accept. Then, I burned bridges 
	      and scratched
	      	      a record into this stanza.

Paul Attwell lives in Richmond, London with his cat Pudsey. Paul received a Masters degree with the Open University a year ago. Paul is currently wading through biographies on Marcus Aurilius, Virgil, and Cleopatra.

Dead Sea Sparrow

Gray gobbler of dry seeds,
evolved to twist a Gordian nest
in a jagged crown of salt cedar,
unaccountably brash,
chitters bursts of psalm
from scrub tamarisk.

Its call of Tzip Tzip Tzip
pitches a promised land
to its own dun kind,
defies the real and present
risk of being cast out
of that acrid Eden

as wilderness, scorched
by pesticides, corrodes
into wasteland and countless
species are counted
down toward extinction–
from few to one to none.

A Nazarene child shaped
birds from sodden clay
and, holding those playthings,
blew on mudded wings
until the sparrows took flight
into an innocent sky.

Now these small messengers
cannot be conjured from earth
into the thin air of being.
Still, this one bird, clinging
to the cedar’s harrowed bark,
exalts its Shabbat song.

Note: In the gnostic Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the child Jesus clapped his hands to bring life to twelve sparrows he had formed from soft clay on the Sabbath day. The Qur’an 5:110 refers to Jesus breathing life into a clay bird.

Dan MacIsaac is a poet from Vancouver Island. Brick Books published his collection, Cries from the Ark. His poetry received the Foley Prize from America, and has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including, Stand, Magma, Agenda, Presence, and Homage to Soren Kierkegaard.

Intimations

It may be no more than the blackbird
singing in a hawthorn bush - as if 
he’d sung there forty years and never stopped -

the patch of reddened sorrel and dry grasses 
running behind a broken wall, abandoned coppice,
or the weathered gateway to a paddock

humped now in tussocks and tall burdock – 
edges of places, far up back lanes, offering 
half glances into what? – to following 

the margins of a stream, way-marked by willows 
down a fold of land, to where it sinks 
in a sump of bulrush and bright kingcups, 

or of foraging the hedgerows, looking 
for nests, wild fruit, gathering bunches 
of shy flowers now protected by the Law?

And sometimes, coming through the strip 
of woodland, there is a stile set in the fence 
ahead, sunlight on open fields beyond,

the back-lit branches drawn aside like curtains 
round a stage-set, picturing a promise 
brighter than real life ever could fulfil.

Tony Lucas is retired from parish ministry but continues with work of editing and spiritual direction. His poetry has appeared widely on both sides of the Atlantic. Past collections, including Rufus at Ocean Beach (Stride/Carmelyon) and Unsettled Accounts (Stairwell Books’) remain available. He is a long-term resident of South London.

Finding Space

on days when noises
fly in my face
like a murder of crows,
cawing and squawking,

when movements
flash around me,
disco balls slicing
every optic nerve,

when a touch
feels like spider webs,
and I propel both arms
in windmill defense,

I want to float,
to curve my body
like a spoon
against the dark side

of the slivered moon,
take measured breaths,
explore the silence
like one explores

the space left
by a pulled tooth,
close my eyes,
and drift into the abyss.

Arvilla Fee lives in Dayton, Ohio with her family. Her passions are writing, photography, and traveling. Arvilla’s works have been widely published in both national and international presses, including Tipton Poetry Journal, October Hill Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Snakeskin, Rat’s Ass Review and others. Her two published poetry books: The Human Side and This is Life can be found on Amazon. Her third poetry book is Mosaic: A Million Little Pieces. To learn more, visit her website: https://www.soulpoetry7.com

After Long and Slowly Burn

After long and slowly burn
the violet and final black,
blaze the white of early turn
of year; floweret where yet lack

leaf and vine, the green deferred.
Dazzle light in lengthen day
so banish dark where song of bird
shall not ring, and rise the way

of sun in sky; shadows will flee
underfoot, so trample down
the dark. Petal and song agree:

birth redeemed, and all the ground
in light transform. The many shades
reunite, and sky remade.

Connor Patrick Wood is a poet and Substacker (https://cultureuncurled.substack.com) in Arlington, Massachusetts. He holds a BA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in religion and science from Boston University. Before he left academia, Connor’s research on the cognitive science of ritual was funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He has published poetry at the Rabbit Room Substack, Ekstasis, and elsewhere.

Mourning Dove

Somehow, your song
is softer, even
than the taciturn shade of your feathers
as they return to your sides, on folded wings.

And somehow, your eyes
are the eyes of a sage, warm
and watered, and closed
above the ink-dark band of your clerical collar.

You are bowed above me, on the branch of a tree
that was not supposed to live.
Its tender arms
are steeples in the dawn-light, and you
are a prayer.

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 or is forthcoming in Solid Food Press, Ekstasis Magazine, and Clayjar Review.

Psalm 113

If walking could cure troubles, 
if each sandprint truly erased a wave, 
then, in one week, we walk off a century. 

Before dawn, crystal jellyfish wash ashore. We step aside, in step. 
At dusk, a blue sun umbrella bobs along the beach, looking for its mate.
At blazing noon, we are hand in hand while the dog circles ghost crabs. 

At sea level we walk, lifted high.
Tearsalt evaporates, maybe forever.

                                      small sandpiper
                                      large sea
                                      God’s sun, God’s whole heaven

Megan Willome is the author of Love and other Mysteries, a poetry collection inspired by Song of Solomon and the Mysteries of the Rosary. She has also written The Joy of Poetry, a memoir, and Rainbow Crow, a picture book. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, a song, and a walk in the dark.