Category: Poetry

The wind does not speak

It listens.

The wind can hear every whisper,

Every scream.

The wind can hear every thought,

Every secret.

It listens.

The wind witnesses every heart-felt memory,

Every heartbreak.

It sees.

The wind witnesses every sweet embrace,

Every slam.

It sees.

The wind can hear everything.

And for that reason:

The wind does not speak.

It listens.

 

Emily Waclawski is a 20-year-old English major at HCC. She has been an active writer and poet since she was 12. Other than writing, Emily enjoys playing guitar and ukulele, singing, and enjoys playing with her two cats: Mabel and Perseus.

The leaves are just beginning to turn,

Yellow, orange, red, brown,

A reminder of the infinite cycle of life.

 

Dew rests cold on the tips of dying grass,

Worms wiggle on the wet pavement

And the birds chirp at first light.

 

The leaves are just beginning to turn,

The air feels brisk and our hair hangs,

Free in our face as the temperature drops.

 

And we fill our bellies at a constant rate,

With hot drinks,

Tea and cocoa warming our insides.

 

The leaves are just beginning to turn,

And we hear our feet scuff against pavement,

And the wind seems more familiar.

 

The wind rustles the leaves,

And whistles through cracked windows,

Whispering softly in our ears.

 

The leaves are just beginning to turn,

And we start listening,

Sounds speak louder.

 

The leaves and dew and worms and birds,

And hot drinks and wind and rain,

It seems, you’ve just appeared!

 

The leaves are just beginning to turn,

And we stop to think for a second,

Realizing that life is constant but irregular, too.

 

These things aren’t seasonal, as we believe,

They are present and welcome all year round,

Why just now do we notice?

 

The leaves are just beginning to turn,

And we know now,

That intensity grows for all things in the fall.

 

The colors and sounds prick our senses,

And whisper in our ears,

The secret of life everlasting.

 

The leaves are just beginning to turn,

And we want to stay like this forever,

A year is too long to wait.

 

But what about a day?

Today the leaves are turning,

And tomorrow they will too.

 

The leaves are just beginning to turn,

And our self-awareness grows,

We know not just our life, but life around us, too.

 

Life can be blue and grey, low and dim,

But it can be beautiful and lively and colorful,

Yellow, orange, red, and brown.

 

When the leaves begin to turn.

 

Afraid of the pet-store bird who died.

Her sister retrieves the greensogreen

Corpse.

From her bedroom window perch, she watches her sister bury it,

Her father’s shovel from the hook in the garage packs it in.

She sees for the first time, their backyard is a cemetery.

Bones rest in soft shallow graves, a friendly intersection like

Young girls sharing beds at a sleepover,

Tingeing her suburb with loss.

Then life goes silently off track.

Spent, though surely unknown to her

Making up for it.

Trying to get the birds to forgive her

Not the death so much. The fear

Of them, of the greensogreen, of

Her sister.

 

Buffy lives in Los Angeles where she writes short stories and poems now that her time marketing films is up. In 2017, she was a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Award.

When I used to hunt for deer

I’d park on a gravel road

and hike in a half mile

on a rusty railroad track.

At a leaning swamp oak

I’d veer into the woods and

brush burrow over a ridge,

to where two deer trails

meandered across each other.

 

 

I’d set my folding stool

between two large boulders

with a tree obscured view

of the intersection

and wait.

The deer paths cut through

a long-abandoned farmstead.

A toppling chimney and stone fences

were all that remained.

Most of the stones had

found their way

back to earth

but the pattern abided.

 

 

The deer never came.

I’d spent several evenings

watching the light wane

on a monument

that carried no recollection.

The aching hand work,

gathering and stacking rocks

to clear a spot to plow

was for abandoned purpose.

And I’d been relieved

that my presence was transient

and that when I left

there would be no evidence.

 

Ed resumed writing after forty years in foreign intelligence and international sales. Ed now works on the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories. So far, Ed has had over 200 stories and poems published, as well as three books.

The first crisp days of autumn, give them to me:

a brisk breeze making you finally reach for a jacket.

 

Give me the adornment of it: deep orange, rich golds,

trees losing their yearly cloaks, the sounds of birds growing more faint.

 

To hear the tractor start up again, it’s harvest time.

Apples, grapes, potatoes and pumpkins. The foods of the season.

 

I’ll take all of it, Father of Winter, the days darkening

as the sun is seen for fewer hours and night falls faster than before.

 

The first morning frosts, causing you to scrape the windshield

of your car, numbing your fingers until they feel nothing at all.

 

You see the clouds of fog as you speak and feel the twinges

of pain on your reddened and chilled cheeks. You don your

 

first sweater, gloves, boots, and a scarf for good measure,

sipping your cider as you carry on through the day as normal.

 

Now there are Friday night football games and the sounds

of the marching band. Everyone stands and cheers.

 

It is a season of change and togetherness as we step

into the impending ceaseless dark, keeping close to stay warm.

 

 

Brittney is a recent graduate of Central Washington University, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in English: Professional and Creative Writing. She currently lives is Washington State, where she is a substitute teacher.