We all take journeys, whether we want to or not, whether we are prepared or not. Our entire life is a journey, starting with that first cry which we learn gets us attention to the last soft murmur as death carries us over. What happens in between is up to us, and it is what matters.
Continue reading...Issue Ten – October 2006
Photographs From Bosnia
By Steve Horn
In 2005, with the generous support of the Island community, I completed a book of photographs and essays, Pictures Without Borders: Bosnia Revisited, which narrates the story of my return trip to the Balkans after thirty years in search of places and people from the past.
Crow
By Mike Conner
I was nineteen years old, returning from a winter in the jungles of Southern Belize, dramatically changed by a foreign climate and culture. On contract as a student of The Evergreen State College of Olympia, Washington, I’d been immersed in studying rainforest natural history and the lives and subsistence strategies of the Kekchi Maya.
Continue reading...Life After Herbert
By Alie Wiegersma Smaalders
Genevieve Heller was on her knees, weeding. The soil, black and soft after the recent rains, let go of the weeds readily. Her fingers tightened around the base of a blooming filaree. Such pretty rose-lavender flowers. Sorry, filaree, out you go.
She swept her hair away from her face with the back of her hand. Her knees hurt. Every time she moved along the border, her knees hurt more.
Continue reading...Ringmaker (excerpt)
By Helen Sanders
Belador dragged her up the stairs, saying good night with such quickness to his mother that Etaine regarded them with some sadness in her eyes. “We have a great deal of work to see to in the morning. Rest well.” Belador pulled Sauvir up the stairs with the concentration of a questing hound and too tired to resist, she let her curiosity have its way with her.
Continue reading...Spiders
By Colleen Smith Armstrong
I look for you
beneath the bed,
inside my boots,
nestling in the folds
of my sheets.
strawberries
By Colleen Smith Armstrong
the dark, scarlet curve
fades to pale.
pink skin sparkling
juice dripping,
easier
By Colleen Smith Armstrong
this is what it is like
to love someone
who will never love you back:
it is a thorn in the chest
buried deep, drawing blood.
Apocalypse
By Colleen Smith Armstrong
the sky will be black
ashen limbs falling at my feet
torn hearts bleeding in the grass
brown rabbits, green grasshoppers, black crows, red foxes
all scrambling in herds of dust and blood and pain
This November Wind
By Molly Swan-Sheeran
At last the sun
breaks free of the gray cover,
leaving a glaucous sheen
on the horizon.
Two eagles,
inspired by the wind,
spiral around each other
in their amorous dance.
The Winter Wren
By Molly Swan-Sheeran
seem to writhe on the beach
where a southerly flung them ashore.
In the fading light
their golden brown lengths
twist around each other
like an ancient Celtic design.
September
By John Sangster
Two crows steal apples from the orchard, black-eyed thieves shuttling their cargo (only what’s ripe) into the woods. Do I pick now or wait until the crop’s ready, risking a full-scale heist? Not just crows, either: coons, woodpeckers . . .
Continue reading...July
By John Sangster
Quiet on the deck this morning. Dry July, no dew on the table, the Straits glassy flat where local breezes brushstroke the surface a darker blue. Beyond, the Olympics hunker on the horizon, their peaks touched with white. A dog barks in the distance.
Continue reading...Island Buddha
By Ande Finley
Buddha speaks
freedom, he says
as we bear him
from his nest
of spangles, batik, dark
Indonesian wood
Last Memory
By Ande Finley
Such a small box
to hold
the tall, solid bulk of you
bones and skin
your unbeating heart
conjured into fine gray ash
we sang a little
By Hummingbird Pond
By Ande Finley
Dragonfly leaves behind
a random trail
in the dense pause
of an island afternoon,
spattering light through muddy reeds
flickering
through the rising of several suns
On Ocean Avenue
By Ande Finley
The palms on Ocean Avenue poke
the sky, swishing their clatter
against fat clouds, against pale stucco,
bleached out by salty neglect,
against the edge of this sleepy beach town
that no longer remembers itself.