by K. Alma Peterson

Waiting for dark to simplify my view

I stand and study wild quinine in the meadow
its bright white flowers bear upon resilience.

Bluestem grasses sweep and swerve between

bursts of lupine cropping up like decades-old
conversations, images of what we wore, where

we drove, when I knew you were my ground.

It all takes place on this heath of consciousness:
swales where details flatten like blown grasses,

where petals plucked declare the place and time

where loss provoked was loss sustained,
memory mistaken for something hard-and-fast.

Thoughts are fireflies and reality is the night sky.

by K. Alma Peterson

Is there a hermitage
built for one     a cottage
near the swoosh of foliage
moan of pines
splash of plumage
a tiny house to manage
(no marriage)
rummage through without
damage    set back
from a gravel passage
lightly traveled
where I can leverage
vestiges of my physical
personage before
slippage into dotage: message me

by Alice Duggan

give me a slow morning.
Let me stop on the stairs,
talk to the cat, decide
not to do the dishes —

then undertake a new garden.
Burbling water will call to the birds.
Lush underbrush for the small ones,
tall elms for the lordly oriole.

Then I can hear call his bright
syncopated call. Dear Life, give me
a beautiful dress. The lover who comes
with it. You know what I need.

I will worship a slow morning.
I will vow to do nothing at all
—and serve no one. Only to
wear a beautiful dress

like a bright migrant
passing through.

by Kate Cheney

Between window box & clapboard wall, a spider has woven
a sheer tissue of web. It lifts as the cool fall air flows through it,
and waves like a silk flag, a languid gesture. A goodbye.
If it could sound, it would be an oboe. A bird flies in the same
waving motion, up and down: a voice in a meadow singing alone.
A leaf is falling slowly in circles to the seat of an empty chair,
its flame red a complement to the green ticking stripe.
The sky is the color of doves. Layers beneath composting
egg shells, carrot strips, weeds and vegetal remains
have turned a rich brown—the earth has become itself again.
It sings as it turns under the garden fork.
I have been, and now I am becoming something else.