VAGRANT

by Pepper Trail

This photo of a Ross’s gull, a rare bird generally found only in Siberia, Greenland, Canada, and northern Alaska, was taken Saturday [February 1] in southwest Kansas by Carol Morgan, president of the Topeka Audubon Society. Provided by Carol Morgan to The Topeka Capital-Journal, February 6, 2025. The body of the bird was recovered Wednesday evening, said Laura Rose Clawson, chief of public affairs for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

The explorer Ross (James) ventured to the Arctic
            planted a flag on the North Magnetic Pole
and shot a gull, new to science (1824)—
small, delicate, remarkable for the soft pink blush
on its blood-stained breast—
Ross’s Gull
 
A High Arctic bird, mythical or nearly so still
            in this warming century and so its appearance among us
            —Kansas, January 2025—
was a sensation, and the bird-listers ventured from everywhere
aiming to see this last unknown, or nearly
 
Days later, it was dead, this Ross’s Gull
its body in the strange Kansas snow
end of an errant voyage, faulty spin of the magnetic compass
the disorientation of an unfreezing North, perhaps
 
Natural causes, is the thought
starvation (a goose carcass pecked in hunger and bewilderment)
avian flu (across the world, bewilderment a symptom and then death)
or exposure (the Kansas snow perhaps too strange)
and the birders turned back
the expedition a failure, nothing still to be found
only the known, and the dead

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

WHO WANTS TO FIND AMELIA EARHART?

by Barbara Simmons

Since Amelia Earhart disappeared more than 85 years ago while attempting to fly around the world, people have been searching for her plane with hopes of solving the mystery behind her final flight. Now, an underwater exploration company says they may have found it about 15,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Deep Sea Vision says it captured a sonar image [above] of a plane that matches the dimensions of the Lockheed Electra aircraft Earhart was flying on July 2, 1937. —The Washington Post, January 31, 2024

We love the story, her setting off
to circle the globe, her route 
marked cleanly on the map, 
as is her disappearing point.  
 
We’ve loved the stories since, scenarios
not yielding happy endings, 
but ways to keep Amelia alive, perhaps
as prisoner, spy, or living out a secret life.
 
We’ve climbed with those aboard Itasca, 
signaling hope along with charts,
shedding tears enough to fill the oceans,
not knowing where she lay, nor why.
 
The sonar image we see now, sent from
a depth much deeper than full fathom five,
resembles what she flew, now resting
far below, scant hundred miles from where
 
she’d chosen to refuel.  And if this proves
to be the place her coral bones and pearl eyes rest,
her story has its ending.  We’re left with answers,
not with mystery. We miss the question
 
we maybe wish unanswered, embedded
forever as you’ve been, still flying,
seeking wide and open and free, beyond
a world of narrow, closed, and occupied.

Barbara Simmons, is a Boston-born Californian, a Wellesley College and The Writing Seminars (Johns Hopkins) alumna, a retired educator. She savors life with words to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, and understand. Publications include Boston Accent, The NewVerse News,  DoubleSpeak, Soul-Lit, Capsule Stories, Journal of  Expressive Writing, and Writing it Real publications.  She was recognized with First Place in the last two annual San Jose Library Spring into Poetry contests, and has published a book of poetry, Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums (Friesen Press), 2022.

YOU WALKED OUT OF MY LIFE

by Susan Terris

You   my mother's cousin

Single    were like another mother

 

We talked   read   played games

Knitted scarves   until you met

 

Davy   age 10   Down Syndrome

Son of David   widower who proposed

 

I was 13   needed you   but you said

Yes   became Davy's mother

 

And I never again saw you

Then   today   looked   found only

 

Obituaries   David's from '88

Davy 1994   you    25+ years ago

Susan Terris is a freelance editor and the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and 2 plays. Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, The New Verse News, and Ploughshares. She has had poems published both in Pushcart Prize and in Best American Poetry. Her most recent book Dream Fragments won the Swan Scythe Press Award.

LOOKING FOR AMERICA

by George Salamon 

I looked for the American character,

and I saw the contours fading, the

words to sing of it sour or drab, I

seek refuge in old photo albums, 

capturing dignity and pride, coming

together in many kinds of work and

fulfillment, revealing what we had or

what we thought we had, now that

we're seeking the causes of our loss

as if our minds had shut down and our

hands and feet were bound, yet no

cause is so deep it cannot be found.

George Salamon live in the heartland of America, St. Louis, MO, and contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, and The New Verse News.

SASHA'S ROCK

by Jim Gustafson



"I found one!" --Sasha Zarezina, 8, searching a snow bank in Deputatskoye, Russia, for fragments of a meteor.  New York Times, February 19, 2013


Sasha searches for pieces of the end of time
fallen from the sky. She looks for evidence,
the real stuff from which bad dreams
come down in strange stones,
just the way snow does in Siberia.

Deposited in banks,
left to draw interested children and those
who wonder out loud about the meaning of things
that come from above.

It came in the cold time, to be found
by a fair February maid. Still warm,
its bed of snow melts,
cools light years of falling flames.

Sasha’s small hand holds up
a trace of outer space,
a trophy from her hunt,
raised in wonder.
She shouts:

I found one! I have it in my hand.
We need not fear, for it is small.

She does not see the lasting tremors
glow in the eyes of those who saw
the ball of fire tumble, nor does she hear
the echo in the ears of those
who only heard its rumble.

Sasha’s rock sits by the hearth
reflecting the flames the fight
the arctic winds that run
fast beneath the stars.

Mother and father Zarezina’s fear
the future meteor.
They know better, now, than to trust
the sky when they
walk the land.


Jim Gustafson graduated from Florida Southern College, received his master’s degree from Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University and is a currently pursuing his MFA at the University of Tampa. His latest book, Driving Home, was just released by Aldrich Press. Jim lives in Fort Myers, Florida, where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.

FINDING RICHARD

by Dave Goldenberg

Richard III, Infamous English King, Found Under Parking Lot --US News headline, February 4, 2013.
Image source: University of Leicester

"March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell

If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell."
--Shakespeare's Richard III



To none would this cold grave as heav'n appear,

And so it seems, clod-cloister'd in cold clay,

That I did damn'd in hell these centuries lay

'Neath Vauxhalls and Renaults in second gear



Yet 'tis in heav'n I have come to stay.

The Bard hath penned perhaps no greater role--

And lions have inhabited my soul,

Such as Pacino and Olivier.


Dave Goldenberg is a New York ad guy who moved his office about 30 miles uptown. Although he's won awards as a writer and creative director, he's equally at home in his left brain. Over 20 years he's served every kind of client, from AOL and American Express and Schick to MTV and America Online. But that's just his day job. He's also a folksinger on the local circuit, a passionate skier and an unapologetic Yankees fan.