John Bartlett, In the Spaces Between Stars Lie Shadows

nature’s bonfire burns on

title from ‘That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sometimes

the arching arrogance of

sea waves astounds

the mouth-frotted estuary

the mesh the mix of sea’s mastery

the lugwormed Braille on beaches

the grinding shrill of stars travelling

all that unbeautiful flame-rage

in treetops

we do  know that sometimes

earth’s skin stretches

it breaks too

the wounding and the pain

but sometimes brokenness is

just love’s way of enduring

gentleness goes viral

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Estill Pollock, Heathen Anthems

Pastoral

The junta reminded people, Death

is inevitable, particularly theirs—natural causes

redefined as a bullet to the brain or fall

from six storeys, in a country once as passive

as Newton’s Universe.

Newspapers shrill with outrage over

any duck that quacked—backhanders, quangos

or mercenaries on the street—protests ended when

the editor got whacked.

A sound bite from the Minister

confirmed an ancient, brutal claim

to anything that walked or flew or swam—uranium

and sex slaves fast tracked to Iran.

Old meridians are examined with new interest,

the borders shifting faster than

Food Aid millions into Swiss accounts.

Street by street the desert winds collect

their honorariums of first-born sons: the female infants

in their turn a spoiling crop, sold

by roadsides in the heat.

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Myra Schneider, Believing in the Planet

Taormina

I peer out of the kitchen window at the November fog

that’s trying to push its chill indoors, then rummage in the past

until I almost believe I’m there on that rocky peninsula,

sunlight warming my body as I gaze at the glorious azure, 

turquoise and lapis lazuli of the sea below the cliff

and the arm of the coast stretching into the distance.

Soon I’m conjuring up the old town that clings to a steep hill,

the lemon trees on its narrow pavements, its shops crammed

with patterned plates and bowls, the scarlet geraniums

in window boxes on the balconies and sills of cramped cafes.

I can even smell the wood-fired stoves in busy pizzerias.

And I remember the afternoon we scrambled high up 

above the town, grasping at stones among tufts of thyme

and oregano – bees were sucking nectar from tiny flowers.

Perched there we could see the droves of people below

in holiday sunhats and trainers buying tat from stalls

in the narrow road leading to the theatre the Greeks

hacked out of the cliff twenty-seven centuries ago.

In the distance too was Etna's thin plume. And now

it comes back: the evening the volcano erupted: clouds

of smoke billowing, gold and red fire mingling and competing

with the scarlet of the setting sun. The image stays,

reminds me how small we are in this astonishing world,

how grievous it is that we don’t to act to save it.

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