Bait

by Nancy Taylor

The barred owl hoots, who cooks for you,
from the neighboring forest.
I scurry my toy dogs out of its view.

Next the owl hoots the monkey tune
I heard while serving Bolivia’s poorest.
The barred owl hoots, who cooks for you,

with the bluesy voice of Madeline Peyroux
serenades without a chorus.
I scurry my toy dogs out of its view.

It perches on our fence beside a Yew
gawking like a tourist.
The barred owl hoots, who cooks for you.

It must be starving the sky is blue.
What havoc have humans bore us
I scurry my toy dogs out of its view.

Two owls fly past our house to pursue
a rabbit beneath their orbit.
The barred owl hoots, who cooks for you.
I scurry my toy dogs out of its view.

Forest-speak

by Barbara Johnstone

I am trying to translate texts from trees, a grammar of spirit, change, energies like the way sugars come in. Water is no thing. They don’t have thirst, there is thirsting. There is water-listen; that’s the whole sentence. They have many names for sounds of water. Water-crawl means sharing, roots-with-fungi; they have a lexicon to think their way around stones. Water-breathe. Water-store. Wind is no thing by itself but branch-dance, pollen-carry, leaf-shimmer; greens-drop for furred, winged and rooted. My eyes rest on a Douglas-fir, its wandering furrows of red-tinged shadow, clefts of umber, and a deep crevice where a little brown creeper peeks out. Tree and creeper are a they of treewarble. They have no word for ownership, for dominion. The We of Tree embraces mountains, sky, us, coal mines, futurepast and atoms. Underground, there is a they of boletus-fir entwine, of chanterelle-pine knit that have many different calls, like sugar-trade, like elder-alert and elder-nourish. Their robust vocabulary has no I.

Nancy Taylor is a retired nurse practitioner who has dabbled in poetry for the past decade. Her interests are gardening, walking through forests and petting her two fluffy, mostly white Havanese dogs. She loves dogs so much she wrote a poetry book, Can We Keep Him, to benefit Kitsap Animal Rescue & Education (KARE).

Diane Moser lives on the Kitsap Peninsula overlooking the beautiful Olympic Mountains where a lifetime of observation is reflected in her poetry.
Her poems have appeared in Civilization In Crisis, Poems For Las Vegas, Poetry Expressions, Ars Poetica and her new chapbook, View from My Window.

Barbara Johnstone knew she’d found her home when she first visited the Pacific Northwest, though she liked desert southwest beauty and creatures where she grew up. She loves exploring the natural world while camping, hiking, beachcombing, walking different neighborhoods, working with her native garden. . . She is an activist and former board member with Save Shoreline Trees, working to preserve urban canopy. Her poetry has appeared in these and elsewhere: Persimmon Tree, Diagram, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, NYQ Online, The Nature Conservancy “Rooted in Puget Sound” contest, honorable mention (2019), and Dirt? Exhibit and Catalogue, University of Puget Sound (2015).

Al Gunby finds inspiration from the experiences of his youth and from the images that pop up every day. A retired nuclear/aerospace engineer, he keeps balance in his life by writing, singing, and acting. He has participated for many years in Poetry Corners and Ars Poetica and published Lady Hood, a poetic celebration of Hood Canal. He says, “poetry is the best thing going…and it’s low-cost and non-fattening.”

Table of Contents, Issue #21, Autumn 2023