Or what about the feckless magpies framed
like long-tailed night on tuckered tufts of grass?
The one turned toward the left, the other, blamed
perhaps, turned vaguely to the right with sass

as if to seek its fortune well apart
from the starkness of the crisp dark angles—
formality in mimicry of art—
that pin the larger bird above the tangles

of dry brown blades, its silhouette much like
a weathercock or harbinger of rain
or, truer to its thieving heart, of pride.
One bird a gadabout, the other vain.

But then you note the hose that runs its line
across the park as lustrous as the eels
cavorting in the district’s paddies. A sign
of what might quench the one who thirsts for travels.

A marvel no less stark or boldly drawn
than that which halts the magpie in its place.
So like a rooster perched above the lawn
it seems to prophesy the wind and weathered grace.

For more on Greg Huteson, please see our Authors page.

For Theo

The crimson edge of the maple leaves, the verdant centers
The sun sparkling on the honey locusts
The cotton batting clouds
marching their way to dawn
The breeze rattling the London plane leaves, large as saucers
The drip of the rain off the eaves

The tight fists of a newborn,
his furry skin
his rosebud mouth
the soft weight of him,
carefully cradled by hands that span his length

The way this October lasted and lasted
and the trees held tight to their leaves,
like they were waiting for his arrival
One glorious burst of light and color

Baby, this is your world
This is your sun, your leaves, your sky
Get ready,
see how it put on a show
just for you?

For more on Rosalie Hendon, please see our Authors page.

I name you wedding tree
because we got married beneath a beech

A gold-leafed beech tree, no altar or cross
each of us standing on either side

What I love about you is your leaves
and how they persist, 

parchment-colored and curling,
the only color in a winter forest

You protect the new leaves, 
tightly curled into sharp buds, until spring

What I love about you is your elephant skin,
gray and smooth, wrinkled around your joints

And how generations see you as a canvas,
carve themselves into your story

What I love about you is how you remind me
of an October day under your boughs,

making vows, giddy in the cold
and how the whole forest was hushed

like a cathedral, the sky a witness

For more on Rosalie Hendon, please see our Authors page.

Their migration is “the personification of happiness” —Smithsonian Magazine

I.                    Autumn
Once there were so many,
their weight could break
branches. Trees filled with butterflies
in the high altitude  
of this sacred Oyamel fir forest.
In the chill of
morning, in topor, they
gather in clusters, wings
 closed as if dead leaves,
 
 until the sun warms their gentle wings,
 and they begin to move. Their circannual
clock of this super generation living eight times
 longer than a normal monarch fly from Canada
 to Mexico and produce a normal
generation to succeed them.
 
II.                 Winter
 
Time of rest, sedentary,
until sunlight releases
frozen wings or to lie
dormant inside a hidden
egg beneath a milkweed leaf
waiting for a kiss of warmth.
 
III.              Spring
In March, I follow a male Monarch
into groves of cedar. He has found another,
and they tightly circle until the female
Rests on a branch. He pins her,
holding her wings together
With his legs and seems to
caress and taste her with his
antennae, sensing her pheromones
His hard beat of
wings and rhythm, determined,
even damaging, of his own wings.
 
Hundreds of tiny eggs lain
by this single female in her journey,
A miracle passing down over millions
of years that hatch eating voraciously,
Until they hang themselves by their
own skin, turning green with studs of gold.
 
IV.              Summer
Sleeping under the moon high in the trees, they
awake to the comfort of seemingly, endless warmth,
and travel north, past the Rockies and into Canada
until the first chill that signals them to lay the
generation that will migrate all the way home.
A cloud of orange, if we are lucky, past mountains,
forests, pastures, gathering nectars, pollinating
the fruits like fairies with magic dust.
Until they make it to the high mountains of Mexico
to begin again.

For more on Nicole Metts, please see our Authors page.

The floorboards in the stall of the old barn were pulled up
thick and heavy with the odor of horse
though decades had gone by since then
How carelessly they sawed through the widest boards
after marveling that you don’t see
barn board like that anymore
and filled a construction dumpster with their history

We planed some down
those thick, filthy things
after the rusty nails were pried out
The dirt stripped away
and a gorgeous chestnut grain glowed in its place
We called this one a keeper

The barn knows perhaps too well
how to hold its secrets
The foundation shored up now
and the roof 
soon to carry solar panels
we never even asked it about

In time it will forgive us
bear the extra weight
the way it once
tolerated the stench of manure
let it soak into the floorboards
and linger

For more on Christopher Clauss, see our Authors page.