foliage hatching – Martin Potter

 

twitch-woods

fresh trees’ switches

sprout cocoons

along spring-necks

 

the fledge-buds

begin to fan free

bat-wing tender

in salad green

 

wing-take

flutter-leaf among

anchored branches

earth by root-claw

 

---

Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a British-Colombian poet and academic, based in Manchester, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, and other journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published in 2017.

May 10, 2023 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: branches, buds, creative, creativity, earth, elements, foliage, green, growth, hatching, leaves, Manchester, Martin Potter, nature, place, poem, Poetry, roots, tender, trees, UK, woods, writing Leave a comment

all – Mark Goodwin

 

all

 

washed from

land-rim through

 

sea’s miles

 

-high-sky &

fathoms-deep

 

en

 

twined

 

light

 

---

Mark Goodwin is a poet-sound-artist, and speaks & writes in various ways. He is also a walker, balancer, stroller, & climber. He has a number of books & chapbooks with various poetry houses, including Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, Nine Arches Press, & Shearsman Books. His poetry was included in The Ground Aslant – An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry edited by Harriet Tarlo (Shearsman Books 2011) and The Footing edited by Brian Lewis (Longbarrow Press 2013).  His latest chapbook – a compressed mountain travelogue called Erodes On Air – was recently published in North America by Middle Creek. Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat just north of Leicester. He tweets poems from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced poetry is here: https://markgoodwin-poet-sound-artist.bandcamp.com.

May 8, 2022May 8, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: all, creative, creativity, depth, distance, earth, elements, fathoms, land, landscape, Leicester, light, Mark Goodwin, miles, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, sea, sky, UK, wash, writing Leave a comment

A Summer’s Afternoon in Castile – Glenn Hubbard

 

Endless August afternoon.

Vegetation yellows.

Seed heads

sizzle and pop.

Their beaks

open wide,

distressed,

beside themselves,

the small birds

are overheating.

Only the kite,

tirelessly circling

above the exhausted

earth, endlessly

adjusting the angle

of its forked tail,

appears unaffected.

 

Then a breeze arrives like a blessing

and in the tiny pools spangling the river bed

the pond skaters ride the ripples

while the dragonflies, momentarily spooked,

rise and stand off a while

until the rushes come to rest once more.

Up above, the leaves of the poplar

tremble, sparkle and click.

Down below, the dozy dogs

prick up their ears.

And out on the stubble,

the never-knowingly-not-nibbling sheep

raise their heads

in slack-jawed, dumb surprise.  

 

---

Glenn Hubbard has been writing since 2013 and lives at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama near Madrid. He has written a good deal of nature poetry over the years, inspired by the flora and fauna of both Spain and the UK. Some of this work has been published in journals such as Words for the Wild, the Dawntreader and Sarasvati.

January 30, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, birds, breeze, creative, creativity, earth, elements, flight, Glenn Hubbard, heat, leaves, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, rest, senses, Spain, summer, surprise, water, weather, writing Leave a comment

oakfruit – Martin Potter

 

an oak’s

robustness all

reduced to essence nutwise

gloss green encased shaping egg

its sticky thimble cup

unclasps to earth

the acorn

 

---

Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a poet and academic, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Scintilla, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, and other journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published by Eyewear in December, 2017.

May 4, 2021May 4, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: acorn, colour, creative, creativity, cup, description, earth, egg, encased, essence, form, green, Martin Potter, nature, nut, oak, poem, Poetry, robust, shape, thimble, UK, writing Leave a comment

El Dorado – Ted Mc Carthy

 

“The fish fanciers, sitting by their ponds and gazing

into their depths, were tracing shadows

darker than they understood.” – Rubicon by Tom Holland

 

Arid – it took twenty years for the word to come.

And what did we expect, creeping that Saturday

down laneways whose leaves were dying into red,

towards the El Dorado of an orchard whispered about,

its apples untasted for years, guarded by a gun?

How near we were to town. How easily lost.

 

The youngest, last seen years ago, standing asleep,

wedged between three squatters in a phone box.

His eyes, they said, when he opened them, still had

that child’s disappointment at finding his last sweet gone;

suddenly he remembered himself and retreated.

He was a river of words at twelve

 

and I remember him now, from nowhere,

his life too fierce and frank to be glossed over,

unlike the rest of us, we on the cusp then of knowing

not the taste but the craving for it. So on

we blundered, countryside itching under our collars

until we turned and stumbled into a yard

 

ringed by trees, their fruit greener than leaves,

huge, monstrous almost. But we had to pick them.

And the house. No gun as frightening

as that abandoned silence, or the comb-teeth

litter of fish we knew we’d seen in books.

Never earth so bare as that dried pond.

 

---

Ted Mc Carthy is a poet and translator living in Clones, Ireland. His work has appeared in magazines in Ireland, the UK, Germany, the USA, Canada and Australia. He has had two collections published, November Wedding, and Beverly Downs. His work can be found on www.tedmccarthyspoetry.weebly.com.

April 25, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: apples, countryside, creative, creativity, earth, elements, fish, fruit, house, Ireland, leaves, memory, nature, orchard, past, poem, Poetry, pond, senses, silence, Ted Mc Carthy, trees, writing Leave a comment

Flowers and night-time flowers – DS Maolalai

 

camden. the bus

flipped like a swing

in bad weather

with somebody

kicking their heels.

11pm. earth gone

grey in salty

shades of orange.

the shops all closed, bars

curled open,

like flowers

giving way to night-

time flowers. someone

already hammered,

being sick in a corner

next to a fish shop.

pavement alive

like a pond

with ducks.

a part of the city

with evening in shades,

beautiful and busy.

stylish people

and shirts

bought from second

hand stores.

 

---

DS Maolalai has been nominated eight times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019).

April 4, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: beauty, Camden, city, clothes, colours, corner, creative, creativity, DS Maolalai, earth, elements, evening, flowers, Ireland, life, night, pavement, people, poem, Poetry, time, weather, writing Leave a comment

Frosted petals – Jade Morgan

 

The hexagonal particles of ice are warming, crackling, melting. The earth is only damp on the top layer; underneath it is dry and compacting, offering warmth and protection to the roots during the night. The sky is changing from a deep, vast blue to a softer, yet still intense, shade. Light blue will then be met with blinding white, will be met with lemon, will be met with blazing orange.

“All in good time”, the twilight breathes. “All in good time”.

Changing shape, the icicles climb into themselves before dropping onto the floor with the gentlest of ‘plops’. The departure of the clinging frost, which the closed petals host each night, causes the most subtle movement. The petals are shaken awake, free and able to breathe. Shimmering in delight, they turn their bodies towards the East like a porcelain ballerina twirling on a spring in a jewellery box.

As promised by the twilight, the sky is getting lighter. The remaining night stars twinkle and bow once more, before ending their performance and closing their glimmer to sleep.

As the tip of the brilliant father sun peaks its face over the hills in the horizon, the rays crawl over the grass towards the petals. In unison, the petals stretch, yawn and open themselves to let in the light and nourishment. It is a brand new day.

 

 

Jade Morgan discovered her passion for writing when she was travelling overseas, hiking in New Zealand’s National Parks and Nepal’s Himalayan mountain region. Since her return to England, she has engaged in writing courses to delve more into her new found passion. From the writing courses, Jade has been finding enjoyment in revisiting her travel journals to create a travel writing book and writing flash fiction stories. When she is not doing this, you can find her hiking, reading, hugging trees or planning her next adventure.

September 6, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, Prose, UncategorizedTags: change, colours, creative, creativity, earth, elements, fiction, flash, flash fiction, frost, ice, Jade Morgan, light, nature, petals, Prose, senses, short, sky, story, UK, world, writing Leave a comment

When – Louise Wilford

 

and then, when the sluggish earth winds down,

when the wild copper sun streams into the sea,

when the night creeps in like a timid guest

then, beneath the scraps of cloud,

as the air stiffens with the last chirps of the crickets

as the scent of autumn seeps like a charm into my veins

and the still-warm twilight twists about my limbs

when the brush of a dying ladybird on my forearm

or the dry ivy leaf combing my shoulder

is itchy as elf-fingers as I pass, when the shuffling hedgehog

circles the lawn and the first drift of leaves

crumbles beneath our shoes, when the mouse-eyed

elderberries droop, black bubbles in the ripple of moonlight,

and the night’s grey dust dampens the rosehips

and snags among the blood-red haws

then, we will step through the dandelion clocks,

through the lazy cobwebs, through the sleepy moths,

and we will dance, my love – my love, we will dance

and then we will dance as the slow earth turns

 

 

Yorkshirewoman Louise Wilford has had over 100 poems and short stories published and has won or been shortlisted for several competitions, most recently the £750 Arts Quarterly Prize and the MereFest Poetry Prize. She is currently nearing the end of a Masters degree in Creative Writing with the Open University, and is currently working on a novel inspired by The Tempest, while trying to process why the world appears to be falling apart.

August 16, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: air, animals, change, creative, creativity, dance, earth, elements, Louise Wilford, love, nature, night, place, poem, Poetry, seasons, senses, time, UK, wildlife, world, writing, Yorkshire Leave a comment

Spending a Day with an Uncanny Nature – Chandan Dey

 

a snowy day–

 

the green leaves of the garden

are wrapped in the thick blanket of ice

 

the dangling white rose

is the face of a black tiger

in such a depressing morning

 

a flock of one-winged birds

are migrating to a sunless island

through gray clouds arranged unruly

in this pale light of dreary noon

 

the deepening dusk

with its illusive movement

is descending swiftly to the earth

through eerie sound of the crickets

 

in the distance–

 

the wavy mountain

is a strayed dolphin, swimming

in the ocean of night-fog

 

alone

 

 

Chandan Dey is a new and emerging writer living in Kolkata, India. His work has appeared in Liquid Imagination, Vayavya, Sky Island Journal and is forthcoming elsewhere. He works in Kolkata and is a passionate reader and writer of poetry. He loves to write articles on scientific philosophy; some of them have already been published online. Some of his work can be found on http://www.chandankumardey.blogspot.in.

May 17, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, Chandan Dey, change, clouds, creative, creativity, day, earth, elements, garden, India, landscape, light, movement, nature, place, poem, Poetry, senses, sound, time, writing 2 Comments

The Moon’s surface – Bojana Stojcic

 

My face is the side

the Earth always sees

 

It knows not this body

battered by collisions nor

 

this heart whose craters are

hundreds of meters deep

 

a testament to the

bombardments it has suffered

 

 

Bojana Stojcic is a teacher from Serbia, living in Germany. Her poems and flash pieces have been published in Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Spelk, XRAY, The Opiate, and elsewhere. She blogs at Coffee and Confessions to Go and is currently working on a collection of flash fiction/prose poetry.

March 23, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: body, Bojana Stojcic, bombardments, collision, craters, creative, creativity, earth, face, Germany, heart, knowledge, meters, moon, poem, Poetry, Serbia, side, sight, suffering, surface, testament, writing 19 Comments

The Stars – Linnea Cooley

 

That night, I tied a tiny string to each of the stars

and pulled them down towards the earth

in a big bundle, like a flower bouquet

 

They left trails in the jelly sky

and tangled on the wisps of clouds

A few even clanged into each other

and the sound was like a bell

 

So, I pulled harder

Wrapped the strings around my fist

and let them cut into my pale cold flesh

 

Finally, my efforts came to fruition

and a single star floated down into the troposphere

I cradled it in my arms and sang to it

– until it burst  –

and the embers dissipated in the

milky night

 

 

Linnea Cooley is a poet residing in the Washington D.C. area. Her poetry appears in Neologism Poetry Journal, Boston Accent Lit, and Anti-Heroin Chic among others. More of her work can be seen on her website, linneacooley.weebly.com.

July 21, 2019July 21, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: arms, clouds, creative, creativity, earth, elements, embers, fist, flesh, flowers, Linnea Cooley, nature, night, poem, Poetry, senses, sky, song, sound, string, trails, US, writing Leave a comment

Love Of Mine – Daniel Tobias Behan

 

Love

of mine,

so are you

forged, in

muted

yearnings;

murmured

remembrances –

hushed yellowed

 

keys, of

sun-smile’s

faded verse

beaming;

measured, in

amber leaf’s

fractured shade

crumbled,

into moist

earthen-bed;

 

in words

cast gently,

through

shimmering

refractions

of deep sky’s

sonorous

canvas,

 

impressed

in cotton

cloud-floss,

singed, by

skirting

of emerald pine

sparkling;

 

in kiss of

frost-tendered

mountainside,

in sweetest

whispered

breath’s

exaltation.

 

My love,

such

are you

birthed,

in ballad

of thick root,

and fragrant

moss-lined soil;

in beetle

and bug’s

scurrying;

 

ant’s nest, bush,

and tree trunk:

the soft

underfoot

crackling

of scattered

parts: bark,

and branch,

seed,

and twig.

 

 

Daniel Tobias Behan is a London born-and-based poet. Since late 2017, Daniel has performed regularly at the London Irish Centre, Camden, and was interviewed by the Irish Post as part of their London Calling podcast series. Daniel sees creative writing, and especially poetry, as a great natural form of therapy and creative self-development, allowing thoughts and emotions to be communicated effectively in a non-linear fashion.

February 24, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: breath, cloud, colours, creative, creativity, Daniel Tobias Behan, earth, elements, fauna, kiss, love, nature, pine, poem, Poetry, senses, shade, sky, soil, sun, verse, words, writing 2 Comments

Beyond the clouds – paul Bluestein

 

If I could see beyond the clouds

what would there be?

As I stand here

(attached by the gravity of my life

to this two feet parcel of earth)

nothing there seems clear.

 

What would I see through the window beyond?

An endless green sea on which I might float (or walk)?

But neither my eyes nor mind have reach enough,

so I am like a shell

washed up on some endless celestial beach.

 

One day the sky may clear

and I  may see and hear

answers to the mystery that I am living.

I will be beyond the clouds,

inside a limitless blue box.

Sky end to end, side to side.

Until then?

The ink of my thoughts will drop from the clouds like rain

and bloom upon a page.

I’ll watch butterflies light on leaves like orange flames.

and know that it is enough.

 

 

paul Bluestein has written poetry for many years, but has just recently begun to submit his work. He is hoping Foxglove Journal will be one of his first steps forward on this new journey. He is a physician (OB-GYN) by profession (retired … or just plain tired), a self-taught musician (guitar and piano) and a dedicated Bridge and Scrabble player (yes, ZAX is a word). He writes poetry because The Muse, from time to time, calls him unexpectedly and keep ringing insistently until he answers, even if he doesn’t want to talk with her just then.

August 31, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: beach, clouds, colours, creative, creativity, earth, elements, eye, knowledge, life, mind, mystery, nature, paul Bluestein, poem, Poetry, questions, rain, sea, senses, sky, thoughts, writing Leave a comment

The day the rain finally came – Michael H. Brownstein

 

Flood water drizzles away in the mid-Missouri heat of July,

mud hardens into adobe brick and the early morning dark olive

green sky is not full of dew, but resin and hard tack.

When the first breeze blows late morning, it is not

the dust of the earth that lifts itself into air,

but the dead of the earth – dead seeds, dead fall,

the dried out carcasses of crayfish and tulip lipped toads.

Suddenly the green grass is beard grizzled and graying,

the ants bring drying blood back to their queen,

large bees settle in the shade of a blossom and sleep.

Then, one afternoon, a cackle in the sky, the clouds

gather into bundles of storm and heat lightning.

When the rains come, everything moves out of the way.

Cracks in the clay eat what they can and the river

opens its huge mouth to take in everything else –

ants, bees, the dead wood congregating on the dying grass.

Then it is over and hotter and stiller and even a shift in weather

cannot rise all of the dead things decomposing into the air.

 

 

Michael H. Brownstein’s work has appeared in American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Convergence, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), and The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013). He is the admin for project Agent Orange (projectagentorange.com).

August 27, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: air, animals, blood, creative, creativity, death, dust, earth, elements, fauna, heat, Michael H. Brownstein, nature, poem, Poetry, rain, river, sky, storm, water, weather, world, writing Leave a comment

Lacuna – Alfie Prendergast

 

Lacuna means a gap in something;

like we don’t know how they built Stonehenge.

That’s a lacuna.

We have a lacuna in our knowledge about Stonehenge.

A Stonehenge lacuna.

I used to have a lacuna lacuna but then I looked it up.

It has the same root as lake.

Latin: lacus, meaning pool.

Which is odd. Because a pool, a lake,

is by definition a gap filled.

The big empty lake-shaped space in the earth is filled

with water; making it a lake.

Otherwise it would be a crater.

From the Greek: krasis, meaning mixture, then krater,

meaning mixing bowl.

Which also suggests a gap filled

with whatever’s being mixed.

 

I suppose all lacunas are filled.

Pools, mixing bowls. The water in them

is so perfectly clear that we can’t see it.

It is the same temperature as our bodies.

It is empty space. But it is there.

Thin and fluid,

awaiting murky knowledge.

shining a light in the dark, the edge of the light.

The border of the darkness is the lacuna.

It’s empty but full.

 

 

Alfie Prendergast is a writer currently studying an MLitt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. He writes about human futures, occult pasts and thoughts overheard. He is currently working on his first novel, as well as producing Open Mic Podcast; a literary reading podcast which hopes to capture the intrepid energy of open mic reading nights in podcast form.

August 13, 2018August 13, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Alfie Prendergast, creative, creativity, earth, elements, emptiness, gap, knowledge, lacuna, lake, language, light, names, nature, poem, Poetry, pool, roots, Scotland, space, water, words, writing Leave a comment