A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

East Cluden

Ayla Fudala, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

 

Verdant turmoil, gusting through

Pools and rivulets

Leading to ten thousand waterfalls

I bask in shadows, finding

Simplicity in solitude

 

Wheels never turning

Ivy skeletons like cracks

A crater reaching out slow tendrils

Patiently usurping stone

 

Cloud palaces drift

Immense and unattainable

Heralded by spiraling swallows

Guarded by the old sentinel, 

The gray heron

 

In water life teems

Slipping minnows, grasping larvae

Ever seeking, escaping, regrouping

An elaborate dance, an unfathomable pattern

A performance where the stakes

Are life and death, unwitnessed

Casual prey and indifferent conqueror

 

On the shores, a riot of grasses

Thrust forth their seeds

An offering to the future

Ferns hang their heads

Adorned with pearls, a gift

From the leaping streams

 

And towering over all, the protector spirits

Oak and ash, entwined in a rigid cascade

Capturing the sun

Blessing with shade

 

Ayla Fudala is a writer and artist with a passion for the environmental humanities. She holds a Master's degree in Environment, Culture, and Communication from the University of Glasgow, and recently published the first edition of Biophilia Environmental Humanities Literary and Art Magazine. She is currently based out of Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Two poems by Jamie Seibel

জন্ম-মৃত্যু (BIRTH – DEATH)