March-April 2026
Beech Forest
By Carl Moll
Of glancing trees stood in mute congregation,
Waking at dawn to crack their bark,
Of springy grasses grown in green,
With no gnat or antennae among them
Of soft muds made of dew diluted rain
Governors of sludge and step,
Of our clear water queen, reigning here,
Her reign to rise up upon her banks
Of hummingbirds and hidden elves,
Ministers to all woodland folk,
Of hedgehogs and of gnomishness,
Jesters to all woodland folk
Of lengthy knolls and vanished burrows,
Dug by unseen hand and hands
Of all this forest, I have known
But naught but that I
Would fly to join a woodland folk
Written 19/02/2026
A Quay Scene
By John Miller Nicholson
Many sun-baked sails came to stay a while
To step down to the quay and be not rocked by winds
And to settle down around a hand or two
True, sails’ dreams be ever many
Loafers wander our forged shore,
Tasting of salt that grinds up the air,
Grinds down the sails, grounds on the stones
Are these waiting? Are they chafing, these loafers?
Bleached are this port’s stones
Columns and roads as pale as the dunes
All eighteen hues crated in ships’ hulls
As stone is left home to be bleached
Written 17/02/2026
Mushroom Collectors in the Forest
By Paul Sérusier
This mist covers view like as the smell of dew
The dew feels by feet like the look of cool barks
These trees have stood long like the small crushing feet
This valley, it sounds like its friends’ breaths
These ferns come forth as apricots taste
Apricots soft, so the tan of hands
These women, how they stand looks like creaking boughs
This valley, its sounds how they come
That far light is falling as how rivers smell the rain
Clouds are low caressing like darkened coats
Their black coats are vents with the valley’s hums
This valley, it sounds like a tuning
This grass resembles scents I’ve smelt of barracked dirt
And that dirt slips uncertain like the curving of earth
The gradient still goes as the gilding birds sing
This valley, it sounds like their score
It looks how a choir of fine oboes sounds
It sounds like it’s still evermore
Written 14/02/2026
Advertising poster for Scribner’s
By Robert John Wildhack
I will tug the world’s topaz thread
I will undo it all barely fleece
I will take it by hue, one by two
I will take it but flat and frictionless
For easier flies that that lacks friction
That that slicks and won’t stick
I will glare inks at the world
I will make my eyes press it
I will press until it dresses simple
I will savour its placard palette
So wheels, go on turning, heels clacking
I’ll take you by turns, I will
Written 16/02/2026
Winter
By Akseli Gallen-Kallela
His snowy coat looks like citrus
Hung from his sweet brown arms
When the snow snows,
The fir firms himself to have it
And ventures upright yet,
And a guess that his wintry guest
Has but a hasty time to spend on his hand
Still, royal Stillness is the white coat’s way
And ghost hares wander over knolls when
Their holes are fitted by each’s furred digger
Stillness will stay with the trees some time
Old friends as they are, they may
Talk of suns and some sinking or other
Until Stillness sinks and herded cows home
His padded memory is soft,
Both its going and its weight,
And those who would wait one year yet
Will lose its echo before the Sun
And before the snows stew
For who can hold whole worlds in vie when
Days stay longer by half?
Written 12/02/2026
The Spanish Wedding
By Mariano Fortuny
Walls, wood walls of rusting emerald
Reveal to me old revelries
Some day of delight,
Silken summers
With that soft and bleeding light
Make it bleed into my night
Make for me some fancied scene
Filled with ores and chests of ores
Precious ones that pin to necks
To dazzle and pale
By old perishing day
Yes, graft them to this night
Written 12/01/2026
Magnolia and Iris Stained Glass Window
By Louis C. Tiffany
Misty river, won’t you fall upon me?
Won’t you rise yourself up and fall?
For you look to me as the playing of flutes
Flanked by clarinets in time…
These weak petals of light
Have bedded me
Above, their silken brothers had wedded us
But this morning I woke
I heard your voice sing its trails traipsing down through
Bowed, blue mountains
And I would I were a nyad
Or something else without my feet
Purity. Cool purity.
This pool, safety and haven
Cradled. Clouded. Cupped.
Cure of these bruised stones
Feet. Damnable feet.
Lungs. My empty lungs.
Let water gill and fill them
I would make its bed my roof
Written 5/02/2026
Bordighera
By Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Bordighera wakes to flushing skin
To lay her hair in th’opal basin
To wave in streams of white and red,
Black, and green, and black again
Coming down in gloss and locks
To lie against the sun and rocks
She takes the sleep out of her eye
And sweeps it up to watered skies
And, combing down her mountain head,
Wakes the labours of her heart,
Gives to them the cleanest air,
Then sets them sailing through her hair
It’s Bordighera who buries them
They bruise her and she buries them
Takes him down to damp, shut bed
Although it’s been that she loved him
And she to raise his little ones
And see them playing in her sun
Bordighera, you sweet and bronze,
Reared you children all now gone,
Stabbed you in your loving stead
Even yet your face is young
And still so long ‘til labour’s done
Sun, come soft and over now
Speak kind words to this sunken brow
Raise her head from heavy bed
She’ll set bold face to the dawn and era
And claim her name, gold Bordighera
Written 20/02/2026