A  Promenade of Golden Sleeves

        by Kim Hazelwood

 

They were such golden sleeves.

The kind you hope never leaves.

With russet and raspberry petticoats,

Rustling and crackling,

 

Performing a stripper’s dance discarding,

A slow trance made of sentimental drifters.

 

Highly regarding

That bittersweet-est of turns,

All at once falling like snow,

Signaling the transition,

Beautiful, transforming Earth

Get in position.

 

Golden sunset afternoon,

Promenade dear lady,

A toast,

A roast,

A Harvest Moon Festival,

Warms my

cooling

Memories,

Welling up to my throat,

Of something  passing,

Something  boarding

A lovely November train.

 

Bio:   Yours truly, The Editor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter   shut  In

  by  Linda Woolven

 

Outside the wind

crawls haltingly

around corners,

sending snowflakes

scurrying

like dried winter mice.

 

The land is white,

and cold,

trees etch the sky

in the steel heavy grey of winter light.

 

Evening approaches

in shadows,

smudges

of blue,

bruises of purple.

 

It is the only

colour in the

pale of winter.

 

Inside, blasts of heat

erratic,

unpredictable,

like a shut in

in early spring,

compete with poor insulation,

the creeping cold

around windows and doors.

 

They huddle

in closeness,

in golden amber,

pools of fire and light

it is the red flame of

winter,

the evening conversations

of the dark nights.

 

Breaths of freshness

in the otherwise stale

air.

 

Bitting back

the lonely howling,

the intense

isolation of winter shut in.

 

Bio:  Linda Woolven has published over 70 poems in journals across Canada, the United States and the U.K.. The poems have appeared in Journals like, Descant, Dana Literary Society, Amethyst Review, Write On, Sepia Poetry Magazine, New Mirage Quarterly, The Kaleidocope Review, Canadian Writer's Journal, Pink Chameleon and Fullosia Press. One of her poems received an award from Dana Literary Society. She also published a chapbook, called "Life's Little Lessons" a few summers ago that featured 26 poems, and has also published a short story in Happy, and a story in Characters.