Cutting A Track

                      I

It was a heavy, deep, wet snow.

The tracks were clear, no ice along the edges,

the claw marks often sharply showing,

the stride unhurried but beyond me catching

up.

                     II

I tracked the bear; it took me

to where I couldn't go and I turned

back, walked slow up the hill through

the slashings, on rock lodged thousands

of years ago to the edge where I knew

the valley below.

                     III

I could have been tracking God the way the sign

never let me see the bear, the way

I could never gain on what I was hunting.

It didn't go through thick places,

once walked a fallen tree as if on a balancing beam.

I stepped in the paw print or just

aside looking down, up, out, to each side.

I never thought about not following

the track adding it to the other

ones haunting my dreams.

-Byron Hoot

Stained Glass Writers of Punxsutawney 

Echo of Stac Pollaidh

from the ragged summit of Stac Pollaidh

down to the point of invisibility 

I wish to lose myself here in this sacred place 

which has possessed me

oh, I climbed here huff-puffin a human being 

like all the rest making our way fast

past little bits of gum and cigarette ends

my heart pounding on the scramble

to find this, a place where wolves open the sky

shall you not open your eyes

there's nothing that can prepare you

for the everlasting ken

to breathe like this inhaling water from below

like a fish yet to be swimming among the low clouds

blessed as the stars, yes, of course

yet a Highlander's measure more in the knowing 

that She owns me 

in surrender to be nothing 

I suppose like death's howl takes you

awakening everyone but the dead, being you

or perhaps as the promise of The Way suggests

this crag I know without hearing its word

is beyond the reach of death for death cannot touch it

and maybe as promised ourselves doesn’t touch us at last

be it known we are here together as friends

as heaven is known when you see it

never wish to leave it for the heavy airs beneath

cry like a baby to leave Her arms

to waste away here at what’s been brought to us

having ascended wish the whole earth

to stay and to go on to nothing nothing

to be the echo

~ Girard Tournesol
http://www.thewatershedjournal.org/

Fright Lenses

Blinking mesa
Becomes flight
Forward tounges
Duty ending oars
Brace beckons
Longing beach wills
Kind village
Stop birds lying

-Cory Tambourine
Summer/Autumn 2017
https://mothlightstudio.weebly.com/

untitled villanelle

a dirty little secret toll

with a cost more dear than it seems

weighs so heavy on my soul

it feels as if we’ve lost control

in the shadow of the black seams

dug ourselves into a hole

a mountain moved who can console

burying the truth with the streams

weighs so heavy on my soul

sulfur slurry down the loophole

poisoning our future and dreams

forests flattened by charcoal

how can we help but play a role

within these suicidal schemes

burning both ends pole to pole

a mountain moved who can console

remove the speck to see the beams

a dirty little secret toll

weighs so heavy on my soul

ken ostrander 

The Harbringer

From a bare branch
The crow took wing,
Black and fringed
Against a sullen sky.

A few beats into
Its oared flight, two
Harassers appeared—
Their dark bodies intent
On driving the Harbringer
Back to its perched murder,
its rightful place.

Relentlessly, they dove
At its head,
One peeling away as the other
Came in
With the bravery and insanity
That must be had
When everything is at stake
And nothing else can matter.

-Patricia Thrushart
www.thewatershedjournal.org/

Dream Catchers

We slept together to protect from Dreams

Maybe no one could tell us were real or not
Dear lives clinging to each other by the fir 
Fall through 'till the moist dawn spills

           *** ~ Girard Tournesol http://www.thewatershedjournal.org/

Joanne @ BINGO

Her platinum blonde hair was a firm 

     spunky Irish when she was a kid
And compelled me to wish for time travel
     as I have loved her since she's existed

She says she'll table dance if she wins
All for a package of crackers I'd have 
    never kicked her out of bed for eating
Says if I'm lucky she'll pick Mardi Gras beads

I told her that from her wedding picture 
     Veronica Lake had nothing on her 
She said straight into my transparent heart: 
     "I've had a good life"

. . .and I was lucky

           *** 

~ Girard Tournesol http://www.thewatershedjournal.org/

Forest Spirit

The deer trail is more still than quiet

Scents becoming louder than vision 
Eyes close in deep temple breath

There is no more beautiful rain 
     than forest mist
Sprigs of fog that are at once 
     barely seen and barely felt
Bundled moss like hyssop soaked
     in holy, flicked with urgent intent 
     soft wet sprays make clothes 
     my nakedness
A baptism that fills my lungs 

     with the spirit I belong

               *** 

~ Girard Tournesol http://www.thewatershedjournal.org/

The Blue Bottle

The bright blue bottle hit me like a hint of death on the breath of Spring.

I imagined it being tossed out a truck window,

by underage teens fancying themselves clever and mature and immortal,

      as if the earth had willed upon them that her stolen treasure, Aluminum,

be returned or she’d cause their truck keys disappear for all eternity.

I picked up the blue bottle,

tried to feel resurrection in a recycling sort of way,

felt instead only the hollow emptiness of mindless eternal reincarnation.

Winter had been long this year and lately I fantasized resurrection more than usual

at a field where I stopped to listen to meadowlark and field sparrow calling

for mates or alerting everyone to the sin of the blue bottle.

Several deer grazed the unseen first greens of Spring near skunk cabbage and coltsfoot.

At a small stream, I cupped my hand into the icy fast water and raised it to my lips,

then splashed my face, then splashed some more, more,

then knelt, both knees at the streambed and submersed my face and head,

in self-inflicted baptism for my own blue bottle sins,

opened my eyes, exhaled all my blue bubbles, for the longest of repentant moments.

Pulled out of the water gasping the holy Spring air for dear life

and thereafter walked each step in the garden of resurrection. ~ Girard Tournesol http://www.thewatershedjournal.org/