Wilderness Interface Zone

There was
A shuddering of dust
Light followed
Sharp as knives
Riving the interstice of mind
Crimson and lucent flared the dawn
The mountains lapped it like a rain
Down flowed the waters
Rivers
Falls
To lakes
To oceans
Restless sand
Swirled in the aftermath of breath
The sighing planet
Fumed and stirred
Smoke overwhelmed it
Curled and fled
Stuck to its surfaces like sweat
Hardened and sloughed
And joined the sand
The sun rose upward
Outward
Failed
In [...]

We step across the green onto the promenade
and watch a sloop transition past the harbor of Torquay.
It’s late afternoon. Beside me, a German woman
chatters about retirement. Her husband sleeps

in a hired deck chair, his yellow canvas hat
slanted across his face. Beside a long line of beach huts,
a mother rummages through her bag for coins
and sends [...]

Like trees that shade a path and intertwine
to form a summer arch that guards the walk
where daffodils and buttercups recline
while leaning by the sycamore to talk,
our days are linked with laughter, love and sorrow,
always embracing gently as they spread.
Small buds enhance the pathways of tomorrow
by flourishing in shade from overhead.
And when chill winds, careering [...]

There is no better talk
than
thoughts shared in violet hollows
where not so much praise as scent
not so much words as velvet—
soft petals on our faces—
speak our language.

So, love, make plain
what
you might wish in digging out
green hills for four-leaved omens
we might taste in stems of waiting clover
and I might see in hollows of your
throat, your lips, your [...]

A baby blue bowl, overturned,
Sums it up somehow:
Trees march up the hills,
Casting a green cape across the soil.
A gray ribbon winds between the mounds of earth
As cars—bright, boldsome gems—speed along the path,
Glinting brilliantly in the sunbeams,
Rushing from one place to another,
Thoughtless of the beauty surrounding them.
______________________________________________________
Ashley Suzanne Musick was born in Fountain Valley, California, on [...]

Consider Christ our Saviour: an Eventual Pastoral
Divine in nature, nurtured in a crèche
Born to woman, subject to the flesh
In parts and passions ever one of us
Slow to anger, angered nonetheless
Meek and mighty, normal to behold
Man of sorrows, joy of fallen worlds
Bread of life, made hungry by the lack
Twice-crossed Lamb, and bridger of doom’s crack
He is [...]

While WIZ loves poetry and heartily encourages poets to continue sending their nature-romancing verse, it’s perhaps time to follow nature’s own example of protean morphologies and bring more rhetorical diversity to the site.  Hence, WIZ is issuing a call for short, creative non-fiction and fiction pieces.   If you have a nature-oriented essay or field notes [...]

Coming soon to a mailbox (or computer) near you: Dialogue’s environmental issue.  Several Wilderness Interface Zone contributors are included therein–congratulations, friends! Frequent WIZ contributor Steven Peck guest edited this issue.
Table of contents:
Page     Author     Title
Mary Toscano     Front Cover
Inside Cover, Title Page
v     Edwin Firmage, Jr.     Letters
1     Steven L. Peck     Why [...]

Wilderness Interface Zone would like to thank participants who made our Love of Nature, Nature of Love Month such a pretty thing this time around.  The list includes:
Karen Kelsay
Jonathon Penny
Tyler Chadwick
Lou Davies James
Judith Curtis
Michael Lee Johnson
You all helped WIZ celebrate love and nature with heart and high style.  Thanks so much.
Also, thanks go to our [...]

It’s funny how things look
From however many thousand feet
One has to be to sail on clouds and see no birds.
And when the clouds burn off, I find a charm in streets—
Their random pass, the patchwork of man’s world,
The green and brown space, the plaid or checkered shirt,
The crawl of hills as if topography encroached on [...]