Wilderness Interface Zone

New palms of life
Cup the swelling breeze,
Braided together with sunlight,
Clutching at vaulted
Translucence
And time unspooling:
Teach me to hope
Against the broken branch,
The gnawing worm,
The bitter wind;
Show me the comfort
Of moments
Enfolded and
Flowering;
Help me converge
The dark root,
The crystal dew,
The burning light;
Unlimber in me
The loveliness
Of morning, the grace
Of night descending.
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To read another Spring Runoff poem by William Reger, go here.
*competition [...]

Who strew the millet and sunflower seeds,
Attracting these red-vested jots
To the wintry paper of my yard?
Black and square in my overcoat,
I pass them by, an exact counterpoint
To their gratitude who left
The dark wind for this plenty.
Seek, seek, seek, they chirp,
And ye shall find the oil-fat seed,
The berry full and sweet.
Better to pass through sorrow
For a [...]

Welcome to WIZ’s 2012 Spring Poetry Runoff open invitation haiku chain.  This is a non-competitive (that is, not part of the poetry contest), come-as-you-are,  just-for-fun, community word-dance.
A haiku is a classical Japanese poetical form, usually 17 syllables all in a single line in Japanese, but I understand that there are longer and shorter forms.  In [...]

Got spring?  Got verse sprouting up with it?
I don’t know about anybody else, but I can’t let spring arrive without making lyrical mention.
The 2012 Vernal Equinox arrived Tuesday, March 20.  I know, I know–WIZ is running a bit behind the sun this year, due to unforeseen circumstances.  I toyed with the idea of cancelling this [...]

Through the atmosphere, without a whisper,
Approaches the unseen monster before
Proclaiming its presence with a shrill
Eardrum-rupturing howl and the icy bite of its breath,
Pummeling individual humans and other large creatures,
Tossing around like toys minute items,
Tearing tarps off the objects they protect
And casting a fine film of dirt into the air,
Diluting sunlight and blinding every eye
As the [...]

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 [...]

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.
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Ashley Suzanne Musick was born in Fountain Valley, California, on [...]

HARK, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth [...]

The emu lives in wooded and open country, costal and inland, across Australia. It is the second largest bird in the world. Its ancestor, the Dromornithid, lived at the time of the dinosaurs. Originally three species of emu roamed the land, but only one survives today; the other [...]