Day Twelve.
Wild flowers in my late father’s garden
by Elizabeth Moura
To Each Their Own
The gardener looked at the flower
Thinking how pretty it would look next to her roses
The mathematician looked at the flower
Noticing its unique symmetry
The Christian looked at the flower
Observing God in it
The environmentalist looked at the flower
Concerned for its future
The teacher looked at the flower
And devised a lesson for her class
The businessman looked at the flower
Calculating how much money he could sell it for
The criminal looked at the flower
While plotting to steal it
The archaeologist looked at the flower
Longing to dig it up to see what was in the earth beneath
The artist looked at the flower
As she painted a beautiful picture of it
The romantic looked at the flower
Wanting to pick it for his beloved
The poet looked at the flower
And wrote this
-Neal Zetter
Mapping the garden, June
Two blackbirds seek their latest fledglings.
Orange beak perches on highest viewpoint eucalyptus.
His calls pierce while brown mother quarters broadbean
rows, (both calm enough, no cats about) clucks
as she goes. Two dunnocks flit from hedge to feeder.
They’re tending a new nest, have trilled one brood
to flying. Snails cluster under damp rims of plantpots
I’d forgotten. Dimly overgrown until I spot spikes
of purple, three common orchids –how they settled
there, a mystery. A jackdaw glides in, flight feathers
flittering, attacks the fat balls hanging near bride-month
philadelphus, clings on, sways as suet sprays. Round
the corner by the trellis, bees infiltrate mottled foxgloves,
buzz overpowered by next door’s Stihl saw. Mice stay
hidden, newts submerged. There are rats under the shed.
-Ann Cuthbert
-Wren by Dave Green
On The Wildlife of My Garden
“Not ready for you.” I tell the moles
in my garden.
Say nay to the white ants labouring
over a piping of their tortuous tunnel.
So much I can tell the grasshopper
and pretend,
my sanity is lost midst our lingua franca.
I shake my head instead.
The growth of wild verdancy
where our family’
adopted vacancy bares the summer’s teeth –
uneven, sweaty, sappy, sharp shiny denture.
Here, one hedgehog pursues
the mystery of the obscure millipedes.
The black-naped orioles
sing the ballads of unknown winged mates.
I ignore all these,
map the landscape of death
in the atlas of my reverie.
The roadkills roam there. I drive my sighs
on blind rage over the truths again, again.
-Kushal Poddar
red poinsettias
leaning on my window
now in the moonlight
~ Christina Chin
Meguro International Haiku
Wildlife Map
Flying ants birthed out backyard concrete cracks,
Abandoned wasp homes hang on thinning thread
in our garage rafters. Slugs silver tracks
sticky gleams glint polished chrome, lead
solder awaits coloured glass, to be carved,
follow shape of these sacred slug windows
lifted into place dictate colour chart
of beams stride over thresholds, bright glows.
Fledglings step or are pushed over the brink,
by anxious mams wanting an empty nest.
Fall into soft jaws of cats as gifts, hint
live and warm compliment of the highest
brought into the home for the owners screams
to register a culture shock of extremes.
-Paul Brookes
Bios and Links
-Ann Cuthbert
writes and performs, usually with the Tees Women Poets Collective. Her work has been widely published online and in print, most recently in Dreich anthologies, Amethyst Review, Green Ink Poetry and the anthology Hard Times Happen (Black Pear Press.) She was Highly Commended in the 2021 YorkMix Poems for Children competition and her poem video, Dracula’s Café, was shown on BBC Upload Festival 2021. Her poetry chapbook Watching a Heron with Davey is published by Black Light Engine Room Press.
-Dave Green
lives and works in Sheffield. For 30 years he worked in education with vulnerable and neurodiverse children before belatedly discovering that recent governments may not be prioritizing the marginalized in society. Now he trains people in positive mental health and how to recover from the pandemic. He writes poems, paints, chops logs, cycles everywhere and shops local.
