Wilderness Interface Zone

blue birds
cut
and hover
over rich
reds
and pumpkin
leaves –
swell
with lush
lilies lying
nude
along the cold
stream, peeling
effigies
of a great painter.
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Bradley McIlwain is a Canadian-based writer and poet who lives and works in rural Ontario. His poems have been published in national and international print and online magazines. He holds a Bachelor of Arts, Honours, from Trent University, with [...]

In this forest where
vermilion autumn
burns to embers
yet another year
my boots have worn
a long accustomed path
I marked the berries
going red
the sorrel’s tattered flame
and yet I failed
to see or take
good note of that
which startles
and takes my breath
this morning
within a tiny clearing
visible just now
through thinning brush
this tree so
small and low and lit
by fleeting brilliance
of the rising sun
that turns [...]

I cannot kick a mound of maple leaves
or see a pumpkin peeking from the vine
before the frost and not remember hills
where summer laid her green. A distant line
of poplars gleams like curtains made of coins;
it shakes at passing clouds. And everywhere
the magpie hops, I see another sign
of hawthorns beckoning the winter air
to breathe upon the [...]

When the moon becomes a mellow pear
on twilight’s bough, and stars swirl up like maple leaves
before they’re swept into the dawn, I’ve often
walked this garden where the voice of whippoorwills
would carry remnant melodies across long, dusky
hours. At times I feel this eastern breeze has lifted
me, somehow, beyond the soft-lit sloping fields
and conifer lined hills. To [...]