My Possession
by David Sapp
Despite a posted
No Trespassing
Private Property
I fail to master
My obsession I’ll
Covet my possession
This scene is mine
This panoramic vista
Without the shackles
Of deed surveyor taxes
Mortgage or foreclosure
This modest wilderness
Along Smokey Road
Where it curves just so
Where meadow meets wood
Where bulrushes nod
Where there’s every
Variation of emerald
Viridian and chartreuse
Where morning glories
And saffron lilies
Open their sex to
Bees’ bustling orgies
Where hairy grasses
Where heady loam
Are trespassed with all
Manner of crawling things
Where red-tailed hawks
Covet diving at mice
Swallows covet owning
All the mosquitoes
This is my possession.
Bio: David Sapp, writer, artist, and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poems appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie.
Fall Notes
by Joan McNerney
Four sparkling maples
sashaying in autumn winds.
dressed in yellow lace.
Half-moon hiding in old
oak tree on top of hillside.
We hear children kicking
up leaves shouting, jumping
over mounds of foliage.
Bright leaves gleaming
in sunshine tumbling
through an Alice blue sky.
Carpets of red yellow brown
foliage unfurls before us.
Walking through trails of trees
becoming spellbound by
leafy giants towering above.
Bio: Joan McNerney’s poetry is published worldwide in over thirty-five countries in
numerous literary magazines. Four Best of the Net nominations have been
awarded to her. The Muse in Miniature, Love Poems for Michael, and At Work
are available on Amazon.com. A new title Light & Shadows, has recently been
released.
Unraked Leaves
by Kim Hazelwood
After Frau Green befittingly waved, so long,
After every branch finished each new conversation,
A legion of leaves shuffled their verges,
Blue devils in flights of despair midair,
In a darkening guise of ex-green garb veils,
Dispirited shrouds from their Potemkin village.
They fell.
Remarkably undevastated.
Brave, almost buoyant
In a cotillion of afterglow.
They plunged,
Submerged,
This majority of ginger.
Landing in a new dimension.
Just where, they weren’t exactly sure.
But the closed shop coterie had been rather happy to just finally let go.
The closing ranks affiliation,
The colorfully concluded disheveled assembly
Began to have incredible inklings:
Another year dances, slowly advances
Towards the next endearment of flowers.
Black Cat Eyes Fall Deep Upon You
by Kim Hazelwood
Black cat eyes fall deep upon you,
Keeking in trespassing nosiness
Through the jagged horizons of heavily kilted skirts
With a film on the entire world,
However tender the night falls after all,
However fair the roses bloomed this morning.
In the evenings you are doubting
All the truths of the day.
Deep thoughts get so burrowed and so still,
In the knotty, dark, unraveling of mysteries.
Where it seems like after
You’ve had all your daily self-expression,
You want to feel something else.
Looking for that waylay of spirit, that fetch from a genie.
After the midnight hikes
Through all the wild weed flower spikes and spears
Thriving, dancing, the way happy plants do on the forest floor,
You spy through a grassy artery,
The neighbor’s cat with her wayfinding ways,
Bypassing, almost making friends with intrusion.
But she walks straight away
After a ruffled feathers staring fixation.
So straight away with a lumbering dignity
Only subduers with maturity just so happen to embrace,
Until her next leopard face.
The one with eyes all at once shining back lit black marbles,
Glaring with fire as fuel.
Bio: Kim Hazelwood is the founder and poetry editor of The Green Silk Journal, online since 2005.
Earlier this year, she had the honor of being one of the contest judges for The Poetry Society of Virginia, and most recently was published in Macrame, and Basilisk Tree. She is the author of a poetry collection, The Way You Just Shine (2021) and CoyoteBat! (2011,2021), a children’s book. Currently she is crafting a second book of poetry. She greatly enjoys painting and playing music with her husband in their 70’s folk rock duo and spending precious time with her granddaughter.
