BIRDS OF DARKNESS

by Dick Altman

The Perseid meteor shower at Eleven Mile State Park in Colo. in 2024. Eleven Mile is among several state parks in Colorado working on becoming certified with DarkSky International. (Eric Schuette | Colorado Parks and Wildlife via Colorado Public Radio, September 1, 2025

Carefully crafted and robust public policy is crucial to fulfilling DarkSky’s mission to restore the nightime environment and protect communities from the harmful effects of light pollution. We are involved in various efforts to influence the decisions of various lawmaking and oversight bodies worldwide to  formulate, adopt, implement, evaluate, or change public policies on outdoor lighting. We partner with various government entities to support policy priorities that reduce light pollution and promote quality outdoor lighting. —DarkSky

Northern New Mexico

My first night

living in Indian Country,

on the seemingly

boundless

high desert plains,

begins as I step

from my pickup,

to peer

into the blackest sky

of my life,

and not a light

anywhere near,

when out

of the far eastern

horizon,

you,

a shooting star,

burst,

to journey

one-hundred-

eighty degrees,

traversing

the entire

visible heavens,

to what,

to my eyes,

appears to be

the other side

of the universe.

I’m too spellbound,

to count how long

you take to make

this unimpeded,

rarest

of nocturnal

crossings.

 

Did Indigenous

spirits want

somehow

to further

approach me,

when at twilight,

a few nights later,

I walk up

a hilly road,

alone,

I thought,

as a Great

Horned Owl,

wings open,

glides

from the top

of a juniper,

straight for me?

I know your call,

and just as you’re

about to pass

overhead,

Hoo! Hoo! Hooo!

I chorus.

As if you abruptly

hit the brakes

in mid flight,

you circle twice,

above me,

no more than

two arms’ lengths

away,

before

your feathered bulk,

dissolves

into the fading light.

 

Instead of treating me

as an

outlier,

you spirits,

so it feels,

continue

to reach out to me.

I walk up

the owl hill,

only this time

a streak

of astral flame

races across

my view

at eye level,

just before dark.

I can’t tell

the distance

between us,

but I swear

I hear

an orchestra

of super-heated

gases billowing,

fluttering

like gale-driven

sails,

soaring

across night.

 

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 250 poems, published on four continents.

ON EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

by Catherine Gonick

spirits shed like gasses 

   from the bodies 

 

of our ancestors, 

   children, and others

 

we have loved 

   like to put on costumes 

     

adorn their bones

   wear jewels

 

and red flowers

  tune up guitars

 

They rush to gather

   at the elevator

 

press the button

  for the noosphere

 

that earth-space full

  of our continuing

 

thoughts, private

    and shared

And when the door opens

and the operator calls

 

      going down

      going up

 

      getting off

      getting on

 

the spirits know

  they can go anywhere

 

that we are thinking

  today of them

 

remembering and waiting 

  for them to join us

 

for a fiesta without borders

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in a wide range of literary journals including The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and forthcoming in The Orchards Poetry Journal, as well as in anthologies including Grabbed and Support Ukraine.  She works in a company that fights global warming.

STICKS AND STONES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

                                     

break my bones 

words can never hurt me 
but words are hurting 
even killing 
now  
to shut down 
to shut up 
tit for tat 
with bigger stones 
and bigger sticks 
we’ll show you who’s boss

while children die 
the hungry starve 
families live in cars 
books burn 
(this needful list is long) 
as bones break 
bodies break 
spirits die 
the world watches 
as hands take aim

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.”

ON THE EDGE

by Laura Rodley

Abenaki Indian Pictures. Abenaki Children. Image source: Indians Pictures.

In the back edge of the forest

are stones piled up one on top the other

in a horseshoe shape facing

the quartz vein outcropping

perhaps built by Abenaki Indians

before colonial men sent their servants

to take stones from Indian burial mounds

to build their stone fences,

unknowingly disturbing the peace,

and here my husband and another

man named Jim lift beds of moss

off the stone structure, reveal it

to be as tall as a horse, facing the sky,

the midnight sky when the Big Dipper

hangs low and this is what my eyes

feasted on before the election,

how it is time for the Indian spirits

to walk our land, to look

to the Big Dipper and the old spirits

caught in her cup

for our answers, for forgiveness.

Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.