Today’s choice
Previous poems
Royal Rhodes
Miles of Memory
The passenger train along the Connecticut shoreline moves as if in a
river of wooden ties and steel rails. It travels through the old
industrial towns like Bridgeport, long ago a manufacturer of brass,
and places settled in New England’s past: Old Saybrook, Groton, and
Mystic. Once I rode north during a quick thunderstorm and witnessed
from the window of a coach car the tangled cables of lightning
attaching the sky to the ground. But mostly my travels were on dry,
calm days when I could look out on sun whitened wetlands and woods,
with occasional glimpses of flocks of boats moored not far from access
to the placid Sound beyond. As I journeyed alone, I saw In the train
window a white stick in the marsh — a rigid egret.
Royal Rhodes is a poet trained in the Classics. His work has appeared in various literary journals in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. He lives in a village near a nature conservancy and a green cemetery. royalrhodes.com
Sandra Noel
The sea happens to me today
not because I’m the woman in the bakers
brusque turned rude
or the peaches still hard in the bowl
Grace Lynn
Sunlight saunters in long, thin wires through the fallow field
of my bedroom. You approach, a migrating heron
in a runny yolk collar and suntanned shorts, a white-light emissary
of hope. . .
Miriam Swales
I’m waiting for news I don’t want to talk about
and scrolling through old photos to escape.
After some swipes, I see you walking away.
Chris Hardy
The night before we left we smoked opium
for the first time and didn’t sleep.
Angela France
Perhaps some small creature fallen
from where it should be. I am unsure
whether I saw it move.
Adam Horovitz
We cannot update you yet, other than to say we are caught
in a doldrums between stations and that your father can wait
as he has been waiting these past two years . . .
Sue Spiers
A woodpigeon calls
his five-note matins.
Petals ratchet wide
as the sun rises.
Alison Jones
Distance from the ground has become
a way of reminding myself,
how the earth turns her swaying tilt
John Coburn
Inside May’s warm beauty
I think of God and of the Virgin Mary.
I’ve always loved Mary.