Anna In Autumn
by Barbara A. Meier
There are snowmen hands on trees
and leaves hang by nails.
Autumn blue foretells a winter sky.
It is the quiet without the storm.
The spring green of plastic turf
recalls the ghosts of summer.
I can almost hear the muffled thuds...
the silence is a kind of death.
Winter lies on the horizon,
anticipating 13 degrees;
snow on the valley floor.
The wind died among fallen leaves,
hushing traffic on the freeway.
Into the silence...
I hear the wing, the feather,
of brown girl, flicker
between the cross of branches.
She shimmers,
hovers in late afternoon light.
The beating wings, pumping heart
equals the substance of life in winter.
Winter possesses death
in the drift of lavender composting gray.
Life is hidden.
Life behind beetle bark
and spider silk,
hawking the living out of mid air.
I ponder:
Anna in Autumn and hypostasis union.
Life stalled in migration.
Life lived without apparent sustenance.
In, with, and under
the water, blood, and bread.
The Divine and the Mundane
in a tiny brown body.
Bio: Barbara A Meier started writing poetry again after the death of her 33 year old marriage. Her new life includes moving to Gold Beach, OR to teach all day Kindergarten. After a long day of teaching letter names, sounds, rhyme, phonemic writing, and punctation pzazz it is good to come home, stare at the ocean, and write her way out of her world.
SEA OF WINTER
by Satyananda Sarangi
The gentle wind has gone away,
taking the smile of the monsoon,
the wrath of winter, so wild, so wild,
maybe summer was a greater boon.
The squirrels, the mice hibernate in their homes,
in the walls of the house or the tree,
the snowshoe hare shedding its rusty brown,
when winter’s out on threatening spree.
My heart has frozen as an iceberg,
my mind though like a furnace churned,
four seasons, I have only heard of,
where winters have come and never returned.
My mother waits for me with longing eyes,
at the fireplace, observing its every splinter,
oh dear! Never dare tell her,
her son has drowned in the sea of winter.
Bio: Satyananda Sarangi, a graduate in Electrical Engineering, is an emerging poet and fiction writer. Being a resident of the state of Odisha, India, he has more than ninety poems and a few short stories to his name. Apart from writing, he takes a keen interest in quizzing, electrical machines and the sport of cricket. In 2015, his works have been selected to feature in anthologies like “Purples Hues-2”, “Roses and Rhymes”, “Christmas anthology 2015 (Ardus Publications)”, “Minds at Work-4”, “Kaafiyana”, “Colors- Different Shades of Life”, “Paperboat” and “Addiqtd Book of Poetry”. Most of his poetry and stories are a reflection of human emotions with wide ranging themes of love, nature, society and inspiration.
A Fire In Winter
by Anne Whitehouse
Perhaps there is a blaze left in me yet
as I move toward my evening.
I want to dance like a flame,
light and graceful as leaves in a wind,
blown up and whirling gaily,
up and down, easy as you please,
as careless as a girl with youth to spend,
till I fall at last and come to rest.
Bio: Anne Whitehouse is the author of five poetry collections: The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, Bear in Mind, One Sunday Morning, and The Refrain, as well as a novel, Fall Love, scheduled to appear in Spanish translation as Amigos y amantes. She was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and lives in New York City. www.annewhitehouse.com
