Israel Allen: Skyline Drive, Fall

Brown leaves warble

across the blacktop,

crackling like the voices

of an elderly choir,

Scottish hymns

breaking in their throats.

Grey oaks drone

a Highlands dirge,

chords shaped by the bowing

of branch on trunk,

limbs too bare to rustle.

Cool wind whistles,

like the lonesome kestrel,

lamenting another autumn,

the earth once again

falling out with the sun.

Israel Allen writes and teaches poetry, fiction, and drama. His work includes the plays Ask Me Anything and The Emerald Heist and the novels Ian Baker’s .45 and Bibles and Ball Bats (writing as Chris Allen).

Rebecca Clifford: Fin

This’ll be the end.

I can see it coming.

Like those camphor-scented spinsters in the cinema

who make you mad

fumbling for gloves

elbowing themselves into coats,

buttoning up –

Such a final snapping shut of handbags

the moment it’s all over but the change of mood and music.

So you demand response, do you?

Right to the bitter end, you like to see the credits roll?

I’m off.

Rebecca Clifford's poetry and prose appear in Canadian and international anthologies and e-zines. She lives in rural Ontario, gardens with intention and a backhoe, planting as many sunflowers as the ground will hold.  She is supported in her endeavours by her long-suffering husband and a disdainful cat of questionable parentage.