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.

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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

My Final Walk in the Woods – James G. Piatt

 

Strolling along a bark filled path in the woods the breath of summer gusts into my mind and the warbling of tiny birds enters my ears. Tiny colorful wildflowers, pink, yellow, and blue paint the face of the meadow across the way, and waft their honeyed scents into the breeze. I hear the whispering sounds of the tiny brook alongside the path, and watch small rabbits with blades of grass in their mouths hopping quietly across the field. Maple trees with their white and gray skin, and oak trees with their gnarled limbs reaching for ground and sky shade my path. A red-shouldered hawk soars to the heavens with a screech as I disturb its tranquility sitting in a tall pine tree. I hear murmuring voices of tiny animals under fallen leaves and twigs in the distance, as the soft balmy breeze hurries over the ground with its euphonious voice. My memories awaken, and I remember my happy treks to the woods when I was a young lad. I exhale my breath with a nostalgic sigh as I realize my walks in the woods will be ending soon. My mind is still young, but my body has turned old.

 

 

James is the author of four collections of poetry, Solace Between the Lines (2019), Light (2016), Ancient Rhythms (2014), and The Silent Pond (2012). He has had over 1,440 poems (four of which were nominated for Pushcart and Best of Web Awards), five novels, eight essays, and thirty-five short stories published. He earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, and his doctorate from BYU.

May 25, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: age, animals, birds, change, creative, creativity, elements, flowers, James G. Piatt, journey, memory, nature, nostalgia, place, poem, Poetry, senses, time, trees, US, wildlife, woods, writing Leave a comment

King’s Cliff Wood – Anthony Watts

 

And if at times there seems to be

no more to it than this

return with muddied boots to the locked car

 

(groping for comfort under coats, cold nose to cold

nose, the same old words you won’t

or don’t believe)

 

then love is always the path we saved for another

day, the tunnel winding, whisper-filled,

under a sun-rug of November trees.

 

Also (and always) love is the lit sky, shorn

of its restless weathers,

falling

forever

into everlasting.

 

 

Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 40 years. He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto and Riggwelter. His fifth collection, Stiles, is due to be published by Paekakariki Press. His home is in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.

February 2, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Anthony Watts, boots, cold, comfort, creative, creativity, elements, fall, love, nature, path, poem, Poetry, sky, Somerset, time, trees, tunnel, UK, weather, woods, words, writing Leave a comment

A Black Forest Sojourn – William Ruleman

 

(Breitenberg, Neuweiler-Hofstett, Germany, 2010)

 

Shaggy firs, like long-lost friends,

Shelter me from pelting rain;

Birches shivering in chill winds

Numb me to my own dumb pain,

 

While purple clover, fresh-mown hay,

Apple trees that bow with red-

Gold suns for yet another day,

Lull me to an early bed.

 

I wake at dawn and long for home.

The room is plain; the sky, although

A glad blue, gleams with alien glow,

As cold to human sight as chrome.

 

Yet when my Heimweh shows no cease,

I head to the woods and find a strange peace.

 

 

William Ruleman’s most recent collections of poetry include From Rage to Hope (White Violet Books, 2016) and Salzkammergut Poems and Munich Poems (both from Cedar Springs Books, 2016). His translations of Hermann Hesse’s Early Poems (also Cedar Springs Books) and Stefan Zweig’s Clarissa (Ariadne Press) were published in 2017. More about him can be found at his website: www.williamruleman.com.

January 1, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bed, Black Forest, colours, creative, creativity, dawn, Germany, glow, home, nature, pain, peace, poem, Poetry, rain, sight, sky, travel, trees, William Ruleman, woods, world, writing Leave a comment

The Painter – Robert Pelgrift

 

What woodland shall my vision paint today?

Like Millais, I’ll mold each leaf of this oak,

Scribe each twig, score its trunk with a fine stroke,

With sunlit drops trim lines of green and gray.

Or perhaps like Monet, I will essay

An inward sight; the folds of a green cloak,

Heedlessly strewn, in memory evoke

Wooded foothills in mists of green and gray.

 

My visions like my poem, seek the real,

Beyond the real, this wood as it should be;

As in my poem’s words, I read in my Millais

From image to image toward this ideal,

Or I glimpse wood or poem in memory,

The remembrance painted in my Monet.

 

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 13, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: art, colours, creative, creativity, foothills, humanity, image, memory, Millais, mists, Monet, nature, NY, painting, poem, Poetry, Robert Pelgrift, US, visions, woods, words, world, writing Leave a comment

The searchers – John Grey

 

When I claimed to have seen the boy,

the others shouted “where?”

But he was already gone.

I was in a bunch of weary men and women

who were more than ready to pack it in,

cold and damp, and aching for their warm beds.

As the others retreated, I stayed behind,

in woods so silent and empty,

nothing rivaled my heartbeat for sound.

The trees felt like the dark walls

of an abandoned church,

the rocks, altars stained with rain.

And I was the preacher without flock.

Or was that the flock without preacher?.

Was the boy really out there?

Every square inch of forest had been trudged through

by his would-be rescuers.

The wind was bitter, clouds low and gray.

It wasn’t winter but not through lack of trying

on the weather’s part.

Maybe he’d found a secret place

out of reach of red-eyed shivering saviors.

When I ran away and hid, I wanted people to find me.

But that was a long time ago.

When I claimed to have seen the boy,

maybe that was me skirting between the trunks,

through the brush, terrified, miserable,

but enacting part of a plan to be retrieved, taken back,

squeezed even deeper into the family fold.

I stopped. I listened to the shouts.

I longed to cry out in return.

But that wasn’t how it was supposed to work.

I had to lead them on that weary chase longer,

until the anger was fully drained from my pursuers

and only the compassion remained behind.

Forty years later, I wait and watch.

The boy is probably home and safe with his mother

tor all I know.

Most likely, only I am out here now.

So do I keep searching?

Or do I go home to bed?

Wait a minute. What was that?

I thought I saw… or felt penetrate.

Small but bright. The boy. But which one?

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. His work has recently been published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review, and is upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.

April 27, 2017April 27, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Australia, chase, creativity, darkness, disappearance, elements, emptiness, family, heartbeat, home, humanity, John Grey, memory, nature, past, poem, Poetry, search, silence, trees, weather, woods, writing Leave a comment

Erebus – Christopher Eskilson

 

Days have passed since

I

was in my mouth,

long and oddly shaped.

 

The touches

of a dead rock leave me opened wide.

Silence sits beneath a maze of multiplying sand.

 

I had never forgotten a tune the planets learned,

brightening like a spoon collecting

pictures of a gone world.

 

Now, my pupils burn.

The innards of a feeling blacken.

The vibrations sigh

& bury your

excuse me.

 

Let go, spreading out along a road

cutting through my woods.

I rub my tongue in evening as

the pines curl asleep.

 

Listen:

The dream

—its special music—

hums.

 

This is the mind;

cold and black light blue;

the desert carelessly approaches.

 

A sea of squeezing bites.

 

I can’t inhabit where I goes.

An effigy,

a wild silence.

Living, burning, lost control.

 

Christopher Eskilson is a Junior at Pitzer College studying English and world literature. He is a managing editor at the Claremont Colleges’ The Student Life Newspaper and also an associate editor for Claremont Graduate University’s Foothill poetry magazine. In the past, he has worked as an editorial intern for Red Hen Press in Pasadena, California. Christopher’s work has appeared in After the Pause, 30 N (formerly the North Central Review), Apeiron Review, A Quiet Courage, and others.

March 30, 2017March 30, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: body, CA, Christopher Eskilson, colours, creative, creativity, dream, elements, evening, feelings, journey, mind, music, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, silence, thoughts, US, woods, world, writing 1 Comment