Paper-Thin 
​
Left outside, the flowers keep their colours, and
woody-brown leaves surround, as petals face 
skyward. 

She admires the shades from above, turns back
to the balcony, where useful tools are left about,
from left to right, the rakes and spades, embraced 
by bright white doors, no pottery to catch the 
flaking paint. 

She fills a teacup with seeds, kneels to pick 
some sage and parsley from the slate,
inert.

Left outside, the old fountain is full of dead leaves, 
they circle in blinding light, but she knows no water 
will ripple them back to life, and climbs back in.

The house has grown silent since he left, windows 
still wide open, the pink bougainville he surprised 
her with, as if to ignore another season.

She might leave more dates open in her diary, all
of promises behind. How proof turns paper-thin, 
once spoken later.

She picks at the oilcloth on the table, follows the 
strange wavelets, unearthly colours, and pictures 
him, 

riding the bus down Corrientes, where plane trees 
preserve the turns of a river, a turning of life, now 
she is left with this hiding house, running down 
her short nights,

the long, long days. Come and contemplate over
tea, she will need new curtains and other illusions 
of change.

Kate Copeland

Kate Copeland started absorbing books ever since a little lass. Her love for words led her to teaching & translating; her love for art & water to poetry…please find her pieces @The Ekphrastic Review, Poets’ Choice, First Lit.Review-East, Wildfire Words, The Metaworker, The Weekly/Five South, New Feathers, AltPoetryPrompts  a.o. Her recent Insta reads: www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/  Over the years, she worked at literary festivals and Breathe-Read-Write-sessions, recent linguistic-poetry workshops were via the IWWG (more workshops in the making). Kate was born @ harbour city and adores housesitting @ the world. 

​

Moth Orchid at the Botanical Gardens
 
The grammar and language of art can be taught, but it is quite different with its poetry.
Henry Peach Robinson, Idealism, Realism, Expressionism, 1896.
 
I don’t know why this morning matters, awake so much of the night worrying over what loves me, what not. I only opened a tiny slice of the camera’s aperture, so caught by the orchid’s pink lip, its quill curl, its petals half-swerved as if a moth, white as the common cabbage butterfly I’ve known, eased through the air. “Gorgeous,” my friend wrote, the orchid digital I sent him, called Moth, a crater in the pixels, all illumination in the hot house background of the botanical gardens I mused and blacked until I could orchestrate the photograph into something other than Moth, maybe, moon or, better yet, the teeth from the remains of the six-year-old the anthropologists call Naledi, little star. The enamel’s like ours, but the child is not quite human in some eyes, her child pearls fixed deep into the earth on a cavern ledge, arrayed there 20,000 years ago by what we don’t know. Now this century, a small woman’s hand has plucked Naledi’s teeth from the earth, from this cave called Rising Star. Maybe it was some earth fracture the child catapulted through- or, maybe better, mourned, she was ferried down the stone maze in love. The orchid barely kindles by seed, but even it is not omnipotent. Too dark for this, I think, to tell the myth of a boy dismantled rib by rib into an orchid flower that feeds upon the air. I remember how I dialed the camera’s exposure back as if I would take the picture wrong, adjusted shadow and contrast until a satellite bud leaked out beside its moth moon. There is a moth I’ve heard of that gathers to the cavernous dark and not to light, tissue its wings that plummet into dreams and half-histories. Oh, this story is too complex now: a cabbage moth riding out the dark that I composed and a “flower moon” a hundred million years old dusting me with feather seeds I cannot see. The moth orchid breaks into pieces and birds fly them to root in lonely places. Or they plunge into everything I think beautiful.

Kathryn Winograd

This poem and photograph will appear in Kathryn Winograd's book, This Visible Speaking: Catching Light Through The Camera’s Eye  (Humble Essayist Press) March 2024.

Kathryn Winograd is a Colorado photo and poetry geek whose doodle spends much of its time with her traipsing along rivers and through mountain meadows to find the images that spark memories and poems. Her poetry has been published in journals as disparate as The New Yorker and Cricket Magazine for Kids and has won the Colorado Book Award in Poetry. “Retired,” Kathy has taught poetry for over 45 years (Yikes) to everyone from wide-eyed four year olds to Supreme Court judges and MFA graduate students.  

Jack Prepares to Preach
 
What word do you bear, Reverend Jack?
Reticent as you are under your hood
like we the congregants are not ready.
 
But you cannot hide from us.
You bear Moses’ staff and Elijah’s mantel.
You stand prepared amidst all this greenery.
For this moment we have waited.
 
Behold us, desperate for faith.
Thirsty for the verdant Word.
Stand tall. Your father anoints you.
 
From the pulpit, speak.
Let Shekhinah shine forth.
We are attuned to you
in this sacred forest,
O, most holy prophet.
One word we ask. Truth.

In Search Of
 
Tendrils raised
looking for . . . what?
Sunlight? Air?
 
I think they search
for something instinctive.
Water. Life. God.
 
Arms raised.
Fibers roused.
Orange flashing.
 
Something in plant
and animal is in need 
of finding and being found.
 
A place in their universe.
A place in mine.
The answer to the question:
Who am I?
 
We are joined together.
Brothers in arms.
Sisters seeking.
One cell to another.
DNA meshed.
Primordial purpose.

Trees Ablaze
 
Who set this fire?
 
My eyes captured, the leaves shimmer
as if angels dance.
 
The spirit of the flame ignites in liturgy.
The cantors madly swing their thuribles.
 
I would gladly throw myself in the flame
and let my ashes smoke toward heaven
if I knew these trees were possessed.
 
Who brings this fire?
 
Within the river birch, Virginia pine,
dogwood, sweetgum, and scarlet oak,
each needle and leaf offers kindling.
 
It’s been this way a thousand years,
sun and moon combusting 
in a radiant inferno.
 
With me, they share a spark.
Against this radiant reverence,
my hands are incendiary.

Tim Pompey

These poems and photographs are from Tim Pompey's and Jerry Whaley's collection, Light and Shadow: Reflections on Appalachia. ​

Tim Pompey is a writer, musician, and poet living along California's Central Coast. His previous art, photo, and poetry collaborations include Imaginaria and Photosynthesis.

Jerry Whaley is an East Tennessee writer and photographer with over forty years of experience photographing the Southern Appalachian Highlands region, which includes the Great Smoky Mountains.