Contributors to the Fall 2025 Edition

PAULA APPLING
BARBARA BAIG
DAVID BAILEY
MIKE BEMIS
SAL CETRANO
NORMA DACREMA
GARY DAVIS
CHRISTOPHER DOSS
JEREMY DOVER
MURRAY EILAND
PAUL ENGEL
VALERIE EVANS
GARY GANNANY
DEREK HEALY
SANDY HILL
DAVID HOROWITZ
RICHARD HORVATH
PAGE HUDSON
ELIZABETH HURST
DAVID JENNINGS
CARL KINSKY
JAMES B. KOBAK, JR.
BARBARA LOOTS
JOHN MCPHERSON
KEITH MELTON
TOM MERRILL
STEVE MITCHELL
BOB MOORE
CYNTHIA WEBER NANKEE
ESTHER NOELLE
JOSEPH PAULSON
TOM RILEY
LIVINGSTON ROSSMOOR
ANN SPRING
SUSAN ST. MARTIN
SHARON SWENDSEN
TERRELL TEBBETTS
MARIE TOBIN
ISABELLA YARBROUGH
GAIL WHITE
MATT WIGDAHL
RUSSEL WINICK
BOB ZISK

Selected Poems From Fall 2025

Intimations

This is a Wordsworth morning. Not a leaf
trembles, the water shimmers beneath a shawl
of vapor, and the wild primordial call
of one loon sounds its tremolo of grief
across the lake. The sunlight like a thief
infiltrates slowly, making shadows crawl
out of the hollows where each animal,
furred, feathered, winged or scaled, to its brief
life awakens. My awakened eyes
and all the senses that belong to me
discover in the love that glorifies
whatever was and is and is to be
the wonder and perpetual surprise
of momentary immortality.

Barbara Loots

Fogs of Autumn

Autumn morning, a pallid sun pries through;
Trees measure shapelessly across the yard;
The road is blank, the sky receives no blue.
The season pauses: a changing of the guard.
I lie in bed, hear water dripping from the eaves.
Day comes secretly, like a cricket’s dream
To wake a while and sing what he believes:
Upon his life will chrism a sunbeam.
Through the lifting grey, I think of apples,
Scents of falling fruit, orchards far away.
The dawn mists disperse. The sun now dapples
What I may mark to be a perfect day,
Though clouds remain and night is coming too.
Yes, Autumn fogs: a sort of sun shines though.

Page Hudson

Alice Unbound

Someone I love had died –my loss,
a river only death could cross.
Like Alice down a rabbit hole,
I fell as blindly as a mole.

I plunged into a pool of tears
to swim through overwhelming fears.
Instead, I drowned inside a dream
where no one heard my silent scream.

Mock Turtle sobbed. Life made no sense.
I felt so small, my grief immense.
Once washed ashore, both wrecked and lost,
I wandered, weary, turned and tossed.

A stressed white rabbit hurried past.
“I’m late!” he cried. Yes, time moved fast.
I drank a brew, outgrew a house,
Ate cake, then shrank! Small as a mouse.

A grinning Cheshire cat’s loud “Mew”
alarmed me. “Cat! What should I do?!
“You choose; we all begin somewhere.”
But to find my way, I had to care.

Mad Hatter’s technicolor tea
shared joyful nonsense; I felt free.
Adventures see-sawed, light to dark.
I searched for insight –some bright spark.

Croquet was fun until the rules
showed Death’s Red Queen played all for fools
with shouts of “Guards, paint roses red!”
I yelled “Stop!” Got stopped instead.

But I’d grown strong. I flipped the cards –
choosing life, upending guards.
I made it out from underground
to grass and sunshine. I’m unbound.

Marie Tobin

Cravin’

Once upon a diet, dreary,
shaky, spirits weak and weary
o’er the parting of sweet chocolate.
Balm for me in stress and sorrow,
she is gone now, evermore.

Soon, I find myself a-napping,
Dreaming, sugar seas a-lapping,
lapping, softly lap, lap lapping,
inching near
my mouth’s wide door . . .

Hark, the sound of microwaving —
waving ‘neath
my bedroom floor!
“Tis some fat-free treat,” I mutter,
“Low –cal popcorn –nothing more.”

Stumble up to make my supper,
cardboard entrée, fixer-upper.
Broiled, instead of braised in butter,
How I long for all the other
normal foods that I adore.

Staring at the plated dryness,
(Free of moisture, free of fry-ness),
Rapping fork, knife tap-tap-tapping—
Raise my white flag of a napkin:
“Retreat back to sugar shores!”

Tiptoe to the vaulted cupboard,
steel myself to break the stubborn
promise that I’ll knock him dead
with Barbie bod before we wed.
Silly goal and nothing more.

Now, I’m sampling the cheesecake,
custard freeze, and marbled beefsteak,
petit fours — all loudly beckoning!
No more cares, or scales of reckoning!
Give me food,
Then more! Then more!

Cynthia Weber Nankee

Unforgettable

I promise to remember you
when my shoelace snaps in two
when I affix a postage stamp
or dim the lamp.

Will you please remember me
when you hum some melody
while you sweep an evening floor
or close a door.

In the dark we can revisit
moments at their most exquisite.
Hello my lonesome lovely one.
Until the sun!

Joseph Paulson

Past Elko

Pursued, a modern thought’ll double back,
And lie in wait for words to come along.
Most find, then follow old, established tracks:
Deep ruts or land-marked routes that draw the throng.

Beyond these trails, an earnest searcher rides
To seek a vibrant dusk among the sage;
And reckon there, in clay, while light subsides,
Some storied lore the risen stars might stage.

At dawn, when winds arise, warm drafts disperse
Fine legends, sketched on earth; all whirled, all day
In williwaws that skitter, then reverse;
Till back-lit, snow-veined ranges cant the rays;

And through their notches spoke the lucid sky,
Projecting tinted specks, in air, borne high.

Matt Wigdahl

The Crucible of Thought

Alchemist fills the furnace full of ore,
While poet tends the crucible of thought,
With grief and joy from memory’s secret store,
Fired into flame, the dross to ash is wrought.
The whitening stage dissolves what will not stay,
As night gives way before the dawning light;
Dark matter yields to truth’s refining ray,
Revealing gold within the mind’s own sight.
Amidst the haze a gilded thread appears,
Drawn from confusion into woven line;
It binds together joy, regret, and fears,
Till common clay is touched with fire divine.
So thought transfigured by the poet’s art
Becomes new life within another’s heart.

David Bailey

Announcements

It is always fascinating for us to learn which poems in a given issue draw the attention of judges who are themselves accomplished poets and to experience the poems through their sensibilities. The winner of the quarterly award for the Summer issue was chosen by Derek Healy, a bi-continental poet based in the United Kingdom and a Lyric contributor for almost a decade. His comments follow:

What a pleasure and an honour it has been to act as judge for the Lyric’s Summer 2025 issue. So many fine poems, so many tough choices! Here are my verdicts:

“I am pleased to select Duane Caylor’s “Exploring Dry Creek at Fifteen” for the Quarterly Prize (Summer issue 2025). Its seemingly effortless rhythms and easy rhymes embody this small river’s twenty mile flow. There is a great eye for detail – the poet, looking back, is immersed in his boyhood experience. Yet there is a sting in the tail –

for though thrilled by the wonders I discovered,
with this paradise, I found no Eve

we learn that the young poet was not quite so completely transfixed by the natural world’s beauty as he might have been and, like most of us at that age, had his thoughts on girls!

My runner-up is David Stephenson’s “Night Watch,” which so eloquently captures a universal anxiety.

Here in Vermont, close to the Canadian border, the fall is fading into bare trees and wet November days, with only brush strokes of yellow leaves left floating in the hills. I wish I could send you a picture. Still beautiful but becoming stilled, with fat chipmunks and bears creeping into the safety and relative warmth of the earth. Soon only the coyotes, catamounts and raccoons will be out hunting in the winter winds. The Earth’s calendar moves inexorably on while humans fuss and fiddle and create havoc in our own dens. In the meantime, it is a great comfort to assemble these poems
knowing that love, kindness, noble action, heartfelt regret and clear eyes are also present, expressed and offered to you the readers.

Once again, Jonathan Kinsman sends a preview of the issue, which follows:

Guest Poet’s Preview

By Jonathan Kinsman

This is that time of the year, the season after summer and before winter. The season formerly known as ‘Harvest’ until that orphan word ‘Autumn’ displaced it in common use in the 1500s. While here in America and less so, in England, we use a word that is a cornucopia of connotations, and, a motherlode of memories: Fall.

The poets chosen for this issue have crafted poems layered in yearning and contentment, of memories that sere the heart with a bittersweet recollection. Barbara Loots opens the issue with an Italian sonnet bringing to mind an English sonneteer’s musing on time and nature: “Not a leaf / trembles, the water shimmers beneath a shawl / of vapor.” However, it is her ending that sets the tone for the Fall collection. Fall is the time her eyes are “awakened” and “discover in the love that glorifies / whatever was and is and is to be,” the miracle of creation in the moment, the ‘perpetual surprise.’

Barbara Baig’s “Farmer at Harvest Time” loves his land but, “yet I yearn to go / Somewhere I’ve never been.” This is the time when souls are restless. Is it the need to work? The desire to finish a task undone? For her farmer, it is the “year I harvest restlessness, / And I do not know why.”

In his imagination, Livingston Rossmoor is flying “over the ridge” and “over the bridge / to another coast,” while Sandy Hill is summoned by the season to head further North, where “Memory’s winds blow back and forth.” Wigdahl entertains us with a fine sonnet establishing the beauty of our Western landscapes at dawn in ‘Past Elko.’ This sonnet cries for extended comment but I will say that his words are finely fit and finished for the effect he intends. I especially enjoyed “all day / in williwaws that skitter” and keep thinking that ‘widdershins’ is tucked in his poem thereabout!

‘No Time’ on page 120, mostly in iambic heptameter, opens with a literary hook (like Loots’ opening sonnet) but then continues the idea of change, of light to dark, of warm to cold, of love to loss: “he lets his gaze fall to the dusty window sill.” A fine and disarmingly straightforward lyric, Gary Gannany.

And David Jennings plays with Jared Carter’s alexandroid meter in his ‘Morning Walks.’ One can imagine America’s Greatest Poet walking with Carlo on the sands of Nantasket or Duxbury beaches when visiting Boston and its environs. A doggone good poem that gives one paws to remember our animal friends. “Drifting” on page 130 reminds me of a ritual that many of us, I venture, do when we cannot sleep: the reciting of poems we have memorized or practicing our memorization to impress our respective muses. “Adirondack Autumn” by James B. Kobak, Jr. brings up memories of Autumn in the Sierra Nevada east of Auburn in California. What a beautiful country we live in! Maples in the East, Pines in the South, Redwoods in the West and Basswood and Elms in our wide Midwest!

“Slinky Cat” gives proper due to cats that come in (and usually go out a lot) our lives. The wit of ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and ‘Nutting’ touch upon our traditions. Childcraft’s Poems and Rhymes read with the fireplace ablaze and mom singing in the kitchen bring Fall in a rush to me.

Sharon Svendsen’s “Automotive” gets rubber in all 3 gears! It updates e. e. cummings “she being Brand” with a nod to Will and his sonnet 18. And Joseph Paulson’s “Unforgettable is bittersweet in the truest oxymoronic sense. “Hello my lonesome lovely one. / Until the sun.” Exquisite.