Along the Gridley River – William Doreski

 

On the waterfall trail the moss

wigs with damp an intelligence

greater than ours. Painted

 

trillium spikes the roving eye

with rippled, blood-streaked petals.

We pause by the deepest pool

 

and watch the falls fall into it.

Trout? you speculate. No more

hooking fish by the lip. I broke

 

my fly rod years ago. Let the big

specimens die of old age,

as I plan to do when the light

 

thickens and the waterfalls freeze

and pharmaceuticals no longer

excite my favorite organs.

 

We enjoy the contrast of rock-

broken and still water, the swirl

of leaf decay icing the pool

 

like the world’s first birthday cake.

Nature’s always rebirthing itself

in a shrug of clichés. Brightly

 

ethered, it wings about us on fire

with floral imperatives. Leaning

on each other in the mist of flies,

 

we let the mood distinguish us

from the other forms of life.

Among them, only falling water

 

and maybe the painted trillium

seem mobile enough to track us

to our secret mutual lair.

 

 

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many journals. He has taught writing and literature at Emerson, Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His new poetry collection is A Black River, A Dark Fall.

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August 23, 2018August 23, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birth, death, decay, elements, fauna, fish, flora, flowers, Gridley, life, light, nature, NH, poem, Poetry, pool, river, trail, US, waterfall, William Doreski, world 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

Reluctant Diver – Susan Richardson

 

I move toward the pool with delusions

of grace coursing through my muscles,

eager to feel the sky against my skin.

I am caught on the wings of a dream,

limbs in perfect formation,

like a bird in tandem with the wind

plunging toward the water.

I stop to linger in the scent of flight.

The smell of chlorine attacks my senses,

tearing doubt into my imagination.

I stumble to the ladder and start

my climb to the 3- meter board,

a thimble of fright tapping

a ballad across my rib bones.

Cold metal screams against my feet,

vines of anxiety crawling with skill

up the back of my neck.

I look nervously toward my coach,

pleading for a glimmer of confidence

or a fistful of staunch advice.

“If your fear is greater than your desire,

climb down”, she tells me.

It turns out I’m not a bird after all.

I prefer my feet on the ground.

 

 

 

Susan Richardson is living, writing and going blind in Los Angeles.  In addition to poetry, she writes a blog called, Stories from the Edge of Blindness. Her work has been published in Foxglove Journal, Amaryllis, The Writing Disorder and Eunoia Review, among others.  She was awarded the Sheila – Na – Gig 2017 Winter Poetry Prize, featured in the Literary Juice Q&A Series, and chosen as the Ink Sweat & Tears March 2018 Poet of the Month.  She also writes for the Arts and Lit Collective, Morality Park.

August 6, 2018August 6, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: anxiety, bird, CA, creative, creativity, diving, doubt, dream, flight, fright, ground, imagination, poem, Poetry, pool, senses, sky, Susan Richardson, US, water, wind, wings, writing 3 Comments

The Emerald Tide – Robert Pelgrift

 

How can I hold on to this leafy scene

of emerald lights that, numberless, do glint

in glistening points at times more gold than green –

a scene that shimmers with each shade and tint?

 

Mirroring these leaves, the emerald tide

seems motionless, a glassy pool at rest,

till it meets a sharply riffled divide

whose race freezes in a curled, crystal crest.

 

How to possess these fleeting greens and golds,

that shimmer in and out of leafy heights?

Would that their beauty could ever abide

in verse, just as the crystal cascade holds

its crest, and, mirroring the green gold lights,

the watery leaves rest in the glassy tide.

 

Robert Youngs Pelgrift, Jr. practiced law in New York City for many years and is now an editor for a legal publisher, working in New York City.  His poems have been published in various anthologies and in The Lyric, The Rotary Dial and The Galway Review.

May 23, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: beauty, cascade, colours, creative, creativity, divide, elements, emerald, leaves, lights, nature, NY, poem, Poetry, pool, rest, Robert Pelgrift, scene, shade, tide, US, world, writing Leave a comment

The Time that Land Forgot – Ryan Quinn Flanagan

 

walking down by the plaza

the time that land forgot

walking in shoes and socks

and in a hurry

because everything closes:

the door, the laundromat,

the mind…

and everyone forgets

so I could hardly blame the land

for thinking itself an Olympic sized swimming pool

and no longer land

which made it very hard

to walk.

 

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his other half and mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

February 4, 2017February 25, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Canada, change, closing, confusion, creative, creativity, humanity, hurry, land, life, loss, memory, poem, Poetry, pool, rush, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, shoes, swimming, time, transformation, walking, writing Leave a comment