by Steve Luttrell

The tides
to bring
the news
of oceans.
Where the weather
takes the shape
of change.

by Lucien Stryk

Ancient recorder: mind leaps
through centuries of pain,
beyond war, peace, genocide,
even love.  Circles like swallows
over and beyond the madness.

Skims through ash of shifting
empires.  Sifts through a flush
of flowers.  Chips through layers
of ages.  Panhandling thoughts
over a rainbow carpet into

moon-buttered gutters of time.
Leaps like a trick of light
on a burst of dandelion fluff,
scattering seeds over boulders
and thistles.  Latching on

creeping mimosa snagging
a tree.  Drifts by songs of deep-
throated fluting birds caught
in the terror threatening their
world, with blunderers conducting

battle hymns in suits and ties,
spit polished with a prayer, that
bandaid for the soul.  Wind turns
the pages — eighty-four years
fold into this moment.  Rummage

to make sense of it.  With all
the tricks the years have played
on me, I see more clearly now
with my one eye.  Shake rain from
my umbrella.  Tomorrow’s promise, sun.

by Lucien Stryk

Sunup.  A noisy rumor simmers
in the leaves over dark whispers
of an iffy past.  The chorus quickens

as a fossil hunter unmasks yesterdays,
unsettling the archivist revising
history.  Shoving war’s blood

and bone under a meadow of poppies
unfolding to live honey seekers.
These things happened, as hungry

birds swooped out of flaming trees,
and mother vole suckled her young
away from the eyes of tomorrow.

by Lucien Stryk

Snow settles into cubist folds,
fleeces wind-shoveled debris
over mountain, village, town.

Sends creatures snuggling into
hiding.  Badgers hunkering
like homeless in their corners —

sleep bitter days away.  Snow
glazes orchards, wastelands
in a frosty spill of sun.

Nips fingers, toes, triggers
tooth-shudders down the spine.
Wind petering to a thaw, as ice

melts in septic rivers, coots,
ducks, herons, red-beaked
black swans, sail into martyrdom.