Mist on Mount Abe By Jack Mayer I climb up Battell Trail, a spur off the Long Trail, into Mount Abe’s mist, pastel painted for Fall. Autumn insects awaken, hung-over with summer’s excess. South wind stirs dying foliage, not yet for the last time, till they fall. Yellow leaves my diamond-studded trail. As “Mountain Poet”, […]

Burlington is Nuts Today by Elizabeth A.I. Powell This is why I moved to the country? Everyday is a hipster convention. Girl with $300 jeans, sports her ANTIFA t-shirt and cork-heeled shoes. I agree with her, but, but, but… I would like some $300 jeans. Maybe. I think of the poem “Sir Patrick Spens”:I have […]

In the Harbor by Kerrin McCadden I love the moment after buckling the seat belt in a plane, headed god knows where—anywhere. How I know there is no way to do laundry, dishes, or fix a leak, everything is all fuck it back behind me on the ground once I’ve lifted off, which I think […]

Imaginary Conversation By Linda Pastan You tell me to live each day as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen where before coffee I complain of the day ahead—that obstacle race of minutes and hours, grocery stores and doctors. But why the last? I ask. Why not live each day as if […]

Downpour By Billy Collins Last night we ended up on the couch trying to remember all of the friends who had died so far, and this morning I wrote them down in alphabetical order on the flip side of a shopping list you had left on the kitchen table. So many of them had been […]