Winter in England by Karen Kelsay

It’s here I pause with each December, where
the snow-trimmed walls of timeworn brick align
beneath the windowsill and winter’s bare
limbs bend beneath a delicate and fine

glossing of frost. It’s here I garner all
my thoughts of months gone past, beside the sheers
and yellow paisley chair. A woolen shawl,
a pearl and knit of smiles and raveled tears,

is wrapped around my shoulders. Nothing speaks
but morning’s melting icicles and wind
that steals the breath of graying skies. The creek
is frozen into timelessness and thinned

with dying grasses every shade of brown.
I take my stock of daisies dried and pressed–
my verses, scratched impetuously down–
time balanced here on its mid-point of rest.

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Karen Kelsay has been published in a variety of journals including: The HyperTexts, The Flea, The Raintown Review, The New Formalist and 14 by 14 Magazine. She is the editor of Victorian Violet Press, an online poetry magazine. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

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WIZ’s 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff Contest and Celebration tapers off

We’ve had a chilly April in southeast Utah, but this year, my neighbor’s barn swallows and the local colonies of cliff swallows returned to their traditional nesting sites two or three weeks earlier than they did during the past two springs.   A few hundred feet down the road at a cattle pond that drains an alfalfa field, a mallard has hatched an impressive brood of ducklings. Every hour, dozens of starlings crisscross my yard and the surrounding pastures as they zip between nests and their favored hunting grounds in a neighbor’s orchard and field.   They’re wholly bound up in supplying recently hatched nestlings with meals from the wriggling stream of caterpillars that are plentiful this time of year.   The paths the birds beat through the air are nearly Point-A-to-Point-B straight, but starlings are not above stopping to steal our dog’s food.   She has a years’ long feud going with the starlings over their thieving ways.   The black-chinned hummingbirds began arriving around April 21st, as usual.   The beginning of our seasonal servitude to their demands for ambrosia marks spring’s arrival in earnest.

Officially, spring has aged over a month since the vernal equinox.   The light is certainly settling in, lengthening day at both its ends.

Meanwhile, here at WIZ, our Spring Poetry Runoff  crested and has run down.   The last poems have posted, and deliberations to choose which of the approximately 26 eligible entries might win the Spring Poetry Runoff’s Most Popular Poem Award and the Admin Award are about to begin.   Voting  for the Most Popular Poem will be conducted by public poll beginning Monday, May 9,  and run through Friday, May 13th.   Poets, please come back and vote, and invite your friends and family members to come vote, too.   Winners of both awards will be announced on or around Monday, May 16th.

I can hardly believe what a vibrant show of craftsmanship and poetic sensibilities flooded into WIZ this time around, and that’s with last year’s offerings being a cornucopia of unanticipated delights.   Thank you so much, writers, for participating with such high spirit and fine skill.   Poets and readers who have already put so much time into the Runoff €”prepare yourselves to vote, starting next Monday.   And remember: Each voter will be able to vote for his or her three favorite poems!

Again, good work, participants, and thank you, readers, for sticking with us and reading poems for the last 6 ½ weeks!  It’s been a wonderful spring celebration.   Well done, everyone.

Coyote Willow Leafing Out by Saul Karamesines

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Spring elegance.

Spring’s Shadows by Saul Karamesines

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Spring casts lots of thin shadows; summer lays down clouds of shade.