With the goal of celebrating nature in the wake of the worst wildfire season that Colorado and the Western US has ever seen, we opened submissions for a special issue, Wildfire.
I am proud to say that because of you, we’ve donated 140 trees to One Tree Planted, an amazing nonprofit.
As always, thank you for trusting us with your work. Now, sit back, and enjoy some refreshing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art from creatives around the world!
Best,
Rachel Noall
Founding Editor
The Natural World, by Ron Koertge
We’re sprawled on the wide library lawn
with some plump dogs.
One seems to be reading over his owner’s
shoulder but is just dozing.
The wind tip-toes in, but it’s been so still
we all look up when the trees move a little.
Above us, pigeons loop and veer. They could be
scraps of a love letter
some lesser god has torn up and thrown
at the sun.
Fish in the River Where Others Smirked by Clay Hunt
In the pampered forest, I felt a blast of pine-scented needles
puncturing my stomach, like the sun
blasting through the limitless tress.
It was the own soil I stood on that had me sinking, and I begged
the network of fungi deeply rooted in this modern forest,
to help me realize how communication worked between the bears
and the fish.
With diligence, I asked and asked.
No one worries about my survival like I do.
A Golden Bear caught Rainbow Trout with experienced claws and expected the
newcomers of the forest to starve, only they do the fish trick again.
This time, I witnessed the swift claws of the Golden Bear, cloaked by the sun and droplets of the
river.
The clear foaming of the fresh water flew into the air and landed on fallen trees, and the bear held
glory in its mouth. Glory that bled on the bear’s teeth.
I was going to taste that glory, and feel the blood trickle down my throat. I mimicked the Golden
Bear and cloaked myself with the California sun.
My arms lifted and became rods that sunk deep in the water, hoping to fish out success.
Autumn at Medicine Lake by Karin Hedetniemi
“Phoenician” by Mickey Tommins
The coals were told to hold tight and let themselves
burn. and burn slowly.
and burn all the way down.
They were told to sit in the hot ashtray
while air escaped the lungs of neighbors,
while men clung on to treasures,
while spoiled air swirled in toxic plumes,
while tissue flaked like onion peels,
while the darkness made daylight crimson,
while the combustion caved in,
and diminished.
Those coals were told to rise like fireweed,
to stretch wings and fly
in smolderous spans of feathered smoke.
To be consumed by that in which they are conceived,
to fall out of ashen doors forever flaming,
to be burned through before becoming.
They were told to hide in the cinders
to wait until they were not to blame,
to arise resilient and annihilated.
Pollywogs in Spoons Michael Maul
Above this old farm near where we live
a searing sun brings out water striders
who walk the surface of a pond
which is, to them, the moon.
I kneel to use a serving spoon
to skim tadpoles from the top,
as if it were, to me, a bowl of soup,
set here just to show my kids
that living life goes on.
We look into the lowest hollow of the spoon
and see frenzied swimmer tails.
Closer to the top is a funhouse reflection
of our silver peering faces.
The youngest says she sees her mom.
I try to explain
It is Man’s job is to carve out dirt
to make the shell that holds a pond.
Then Nature shoulders what remains:
all else it takes
to fill and tend a teeming pond.
Soon I will bridge the edges of water and land,
bend and tip
a glinting spoon filled with tadpoles
who wriggle back
to where frog seeds know how to grow.
Then, holding hands I lead the way
to where we parked next to the road
and drive back into a heavy life
in a too quiet home of too many rooms.
Tonight I hope my kids may dream.
not just of loss and sad surprises,
but of happy days where Jesus Bugs
day and night walk the water of this world
to keep them safe and comfort daughters in scary rooms.
May they bless an entire world of boys and girls,
water wrens in rushes,
and things to show ways back to life,
pollywogs in spoons.
Springtide Ditty by D.R. James
Mascara’d vegetation bats its green
audacity and amplifies the breeze
singing through new-lingering day: cool-jazz suite
backing the birds. Kinetic blooming. Keen
riffling. Cobbled ruffling. Flimsy blanket-billow.
Cavalier matins began the scramble
under porcelain, moon-lit cumulus,
velour milieu still cloaking my pillow.
Resurrected spring re-relished refutes
whichever well-heeled cons are in cahoots.
Cairn by Jordan T. Swift
Horticulture by Adam Coday
It is a perennial: it comes year after year
each spring and summer
unlike the cosmos.
You must kill it at its roots
if you think you might replace it.
I know it tempts you
to trade it in for something sweeter to you,
but instead, you nurture it
and you tend to its every need.
You water it
and you pick off its dead heads
so they grow back again
like a hydra, each one
more gripping than the last.
You prune it
when the time is right
with those sheers (a tough match
for these snapdragons, no doubt), then
you give it sun,
but it casts a shadow
and won’t talk back when you speak to it.
It withholds from you.
It shuts you out
and threatens you with an urn
should you dig into its soil,
but you know well it’s not a worry
since it grew pansies this year.
Someday soon,
it could grow lilacs again
and that’s what makes it worthwhile.
It is your Eden, that sweet perfume
of a fresh bloom, pure and enriching
like a gardener’s love, until the season ends
and it escapes you.
PETALS AND ASH by Terra Vagus
blessed with a curse
the red flower is
exquisitely erect.
delicate sways in the wind.
though she broods over life.
a future of war.
pain striking at all angles.
stretching, contorting, ripping
until a thief of identity arrives bearing the coldest snow.
the red flower loves them so.
buried in snow ’til she can no longer stand.
one gust of wind and her petals dance.
all the way
to the ground.
until all that remains is a pile of death.
petals and ash are all that is left.
the last smoke rises.
a gift for the thief.
last love.
last embrace.
last petal floats off in the breeze.
Mezzo-Tenor Duet by Alan Bern
Emotion by Erich von Hungen
Nature has inflicted it —
its pain,
its anger,
its smacking fist
upon the earth.
The lightning comes.
The roar —
only following that ruthlessness.
The screamed emotion —
only, only after.
The burning earth
responds
in soaring, in whooshing,
in hissing, crackling, crashing, “Why’s?”.
But always that distance
between the lightning and the thunder,
as if it takes some time
for anger to understand,
for force to realize,
for emotion to be caught up to.
Always, it always takes some time,
but nothing like the time
of a forest,
a whole hillside
to finish burning —
and then to forgive and grow again.
Mud by Jennifer Corbet
Mud contains the macrocosm
Sodden remains of very small creatures
Lumpy fragments of larger ones
The spit of an angry old man
Flower petal and bone rendered
Into velvet dust that infiltrates the voids
Excreted calling cards left by all
Essence of bug
Whispers of sun and moon and solar flare
Last year’s seed, latent and full of possibility
Or perhaps milled by animal and element
To a fine flour, original colors
Long since quashed
Into browns and grays
The next county’s perhaps the next country’s
Sampling of rock dust, bacteria, and fungi all
Deposited with a flourish
By roving aeolian and alluvian swirls that caress
And stampede across variable landscapes
Around the marbled blue sphere
A protozoan, mycorrhizal army incessantly
Occupied with the work of packing and converting
Microscopic worker bees and
Ambassadors constructing
The foundation upon which we depend
Life fractures and resolves through these grimy horizons
As do the bi-products of our hubris
Communion ending cocktails
Spewed like empty banter into our gulping
Atmosphere; into waterways that trickle
And those that roar into
Etherized landscapes
Blindly inexorably
Converted into
Planetary icing
Into mud
A Refuge No More by Daniel Reiner
An urge had called her back …
Urge? Instinct? No matter.
She darts into her old home for a final check.
A final sniff.
Empty.
Nothing remains in the darkness but fuzzy echoes of memories. The place had been good
for raising a family. No longer, though. Death hangs in the air. Acting on the first whiff, she’d
gotten the children out, taken them to a safe spot. She turns to leave.
A sound—faint, but oh so terrible—catches her ear.
Cautious, nose out, she smells, looks, listens. Grey air, choking thick, blurs her senses.
That sound, once again: The children, crying!
She launches—
A CRACK knocks her sideways, down. She tries to get up, can’t. Her legs fail. Through
red pain and gasps she hears rumbling growls, knows the danger.
The growls are close now.
“See that, boy? Fire brings ’em up. Then you pick ’em off. Easy.”
“Should we put the fire out, daddy? It’s catchin’ pretty good.”
“Nah. It’ll burn itself out. Now, put this ’un out of its misery, then we’ll get the kits.”
“Yes, daddy.”
Octopus by Paul Llechko
Clabbered in shell
or exploding through smoke
circles the dream of liquid intelligence
the subtle molding possibility of mercy
braiding through an algae blizzard
a forest of kelp
a rainbow illusion of life
spiraling dynamic in the streaming
amphibious habitat
lit from beyond the oxygen border
diffused yet radiant
multivalent
a single act of love
an even greater sacrifice
as a million theories of soul
are released for testing
a boneless miracle of regeneration
and blood gives life for blood.
Wild Green by Jonathan Brooks
Rock, Paper, Skin by Christine Cock
A comet has been seen diving into the sun.
What’s left of its icy core is a boulder-strewn path,
broken pieces, like a crumb trail aiding return
to its cold origin. Some people need religion to cure
their longing. I need news from rocks, among other things.
How they’ve endured the weight of crushing earth,
constant laundering by tides and streambeds,
emerging rough-skinned as jackfruit,
smooth like paper’s surface or crenellated from a tenure
within ocean’s depths. I do not know if rocks have spirit,
but the one in my lap smudged by fire says
there are many ways to come home to this world
and this rock must be kin to the one
whose fated journey ended in a heated explosion.
For that matter so are we and there is something
about your hands, solid and worn,
that remind me of rocks’ unwavering stability.
Arthritic knuckles, tipless finger, the whole
marred surface. One flat piece of sandstone
returned with us from the Sonoran desert looking
remarkably like a slice of moldy bread.
A round speckled granite brought from Maine’s
shoreline sits meditation below our birdbath.
Rocks appear unforgiving but nothing is truly inert, is it?
They tend to grind to sand and dust or
compress into jeweled beauty, while from your
rough palms, pocked with labored indentations,
seeds sprout, deer fall, and a slow burn kindles.
High Desert Matisse by Charlene Moskal
Light comes across
incandescent as a slow smile
that waits for a reply
or sometimes, after the rain,
neon bright bouncing off a tin roof.
When the sun has spent itself,
voluptuous, brilliant,
in that almost-after-dusk time
when there are no shadows,
the mountain flattens
grows ghost pale and shy
wrapped in grey silk.
Her smoke-blue shawl
falls slowly from her shoulders
leaving her naked and black.
The illusion, strong as paper cutouts –
Matisse in the high desert-
has conquered the ridges and cutbacks
ironed the surprises to remind me
light is the secret of our coming and going.
Triangled by Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner
Every Prayer by Lucia Galloway
1.
How can I write a poem this day,
so many trees, homes, stores in California burning?
The Times runs photos of red-orange skies,
my car in the driveway’s mantled with ash
just yesterday someone’s dwelling place.
The foothill trails, once crowded, now closed,
unmasked hikers not the only danger.
What can I give to the neighbors forced to flee
the mountain retreat in their weekend camper
while I brood, lethargic, in suburbia? Stanger.
2.
From the foothill trail I once loved to walk, let me offer:
a litany from sprigs of ceanothus brushing against my leg
a secret from the deer appearing on a mid-distant slope
a water-color painting from the sycamore, its trunk splotched
ochre, cream, khaki, and tan
a poem from the eucalyptus with six slender trunks
from a single root—
this tree-bouquet of scents, its choruses of wind and wing.
3.
May something yet be refuge, comfort, beauty, peace.
May devastation be temporal for all things living.
May there be prayers enough for every creature:
human, animal, insect, bird. For every sprig and shrub,
each trunk and branch. May it be so.
Firestorm by Shantha Bunyan
the storm is rolling in now | you can almost taste the | electricity in the air | every hair on your body |
rising just before the wind | with the feeling | that something enormous is coming |
smoke in the sky, | ash raining down | this is no ordinary storm |
temperatures plunging, | fires on the horizon | approaching as fast as can burn |
the animals have scattered | the people are restless, gathered | preparing for the | impending unknown |
snow mixed with ash | may it dampen the flames | in a country filled with kindling | detritus on the
forest floor | doused in the kerosene | of temperatures climbing around the globe |
this has been coming | it’s no surprise | but since it’s here we find | we are woefully unprepared |
now that | fire has become a season |
