Jean Hackett

Prairie Fire

The tall grasses call me.
In dry, crackling whispers,
bluestem and muhly
beg me to consume
husks and dry leaves,
useless as nests
after chicks have fledged.

When allowed to perform
my cleansing rituals,
my flaming fingers
move with quick purpose
down old growth trunks
to cull parasites and disease.

In those moments,
the land embraces me,
understanding I explode
in angry conflagration
only when humanity forces
fields, towns, and forests
to submit to your religion
of plows and fences.

Jim Lavilla-Havelin

Looking for an Image to Capture the Disruptions and Desperation of the First Week
Of the American Tyranny

        not Marat
in the bathtub
    
            but  me
awake in my hospital bed
at 4:30 in the morning
feeling 
the 4.3 earthquake 
rattling the railings

          from its 
epicenter in Poth
              of man camps
from the feast of        
        fracking

The Smell of a Book is
the Smell of a Tree

Every time I read a book or
type on a piece of paper
I know a tree died to give
me that pleasure.
Another thing to feel
guilty over.
The death of tree.

It could have been
a small tree dying
as though a baby tree’s death
was less of a sacrifice.

But it was probably a big tree
that was hundreds of years old.
A tree whose life was given 
for my mental growth.
What do I revere more,
a tree or the written word
that informs me of its death.

Mobi Warren

Baby Cockroach

Fear not, little one,
hatched from your mother’s
ootheca. I am without
my kind’s prejudice
against your kind.

I watch you
scurry-explore
the kitchen counter,
how you pause
as miniscule taste hairs
fire signals to your brain,
report bitter or sweet.

With alarm you sense
the thunder cloud
of my body, crouch
beneath the glass lip
at a jar’s base

to motionless hide.
So devoted to
your own survival,
it breaks my heart.

Lenticel, Spiracle, Lung

The wafer of her
brown-marbled wings
puddled with moon spots,
rimmed with peacock eyes,
knapped my heart
like a flint.

She rested, Tawny Emperor,
wings folded,
nearly hidden
between buckles
of Hackberry bark⎯
ridged and layered canyons
of lenticels⎯warty windows,
slits in the bark
for breathing,

I thought of the alveoli
“little cavities”
in my own lungs,
their soft and moist
architecture,
the micromechanics
of breath.

She, too, was breathing:
spiracles, microns in width,
along the sides of
her tawny plush body,
drew oxygen in, pushed
carbon dioxide out.

I stood there, slowing
my breathing,
not wanting to capsize
the moment with the
bellowed roar of
human lungs.

My eyes softened
to reverent petals
and my heart sang
lenticel, spiracle, lung.
How we can breathe
so differently
in this many-layered world
and yet
breathe as one.

Antonia Salinas Murguia 

Haiku 

beautiful white cold
quietly hibernating
wonderful earth rest.

Never Pass the Chance

Rain, soft, consistent rain.
A washing from nature
to rid of debris
that cloud our view
of nature’s beauty.

Rain, soft, consistent rain.
A perpetual needed commodity
always giving to gardens, rivers and lakes,
life’s bounty of nourishment, beauty, and shade.

Rain, soft, consistent rain.
Step into it.
Feel the drops of wet softness,
experience a refreshed energy,
a free, pure spirit.
Kick the puddles.
Splash, splash, splash!

Rain, soft, consistent rain.
Reminds me of my beloved son,
who never passed the chance
to dance in the rain.
A lesson he taught to everyone he knew,
to see rain as an opportunity to let go
and celebrate the simple things.