INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Lana Bella
Hongri Yuan
Lyn Lifshin
Duane Locke
Elisavietta Ritchie
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Fahredin Shehu
Laszlo Slomovits
Andy N
Alex Ferde
Lekan Alesh
Michael Lee Johnson
Running Cub
Ali Znaidi
Silvia Scheibli
Robert Nisbet
Richard Gartee
Amit Parmessur
Jennifer Burd
Paul B. Roth
Sanjeev Sethi
Keith Moul
Arjun Dahal
Alan Britt
Richard Lynch
Fred Wolven
Eddie Awusi
Joanie Freeman
Hongri Yuan
Amit Shankar Saha
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2017
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 48 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
FROM IDEAS TO WEATHER TO HOT DOGS
When I sit to write, thinking of one idea after
another,
one subject on top of another, it sometimes is difficult
to narrow the focus, to find the beginning of the needle
with which to thread like finding the eye of the storm
during an overcast afternoon while waiting for rain.
Sometimes it is neither a quickly jelling process nor
anything like making up a batch of peanut-butter and
jelly sandwiches for an early summer afternoon’s picnic.
Ah, but there is still some logic to conjuring whether
it is of the voodoo variety, the scientific lab mixing or
perhaps just that natural mental sorting of layer after
layer at times so seemingly easy in an early morning
during those late easy winter days which forecast
an early spring complete with the appearance of the
common snowdrop or the iris suddenly up in the yard.
The changing seasons bring with them shifting natural
weather patterns, some soothing, others promising, a
few disrupting, now and then offering calming, and
other times predicting. If movement from spring into
summer or from fall into winter had some certainty
things might just be too regular lacking any element
of surprise or opportunity for real change. Fortunately
probing the depths of an idea, an incident, a situation,
whether a current activity or a recalled memory, often
opens a window or door leading into a flower-filled
meadow or bird call filled woodlot. And, yes, such
as that may open long-stored recollections of things
hidden away for months or years or perhaps only a
single moment in time. Like our father’s quiet
Sunday afternoon grilling of Ball Park hot dogs.
AS WE MOVE FURTHER AWAY FROM
A PEACEABLE KINGDOM
A neighbor’s dog spent most of the day yelping,
yes, yelping making it nearly impossible to sleep.
All I needed was a few hours for a short nap but…
This morning I take a walk out into the back forty
bush and shrub dotted landscape running alongside
the unfinished sandy and asphalt empty roadway
lined with the older style wooden electric poles
leading to a dead-end spot up a nearly overgrown
slightly walkable pathway. Funny place for power.
I search the poles¸ wires, fence lines, and treetops
looking for any member of the long resident hawk
family to no avail. In fact, it is difficult to locate
even a blue jay or a cardinal much less a pair of
either.
There is what appears to be a turkey buzzard above
using the wind currents to circle round ‘n round looking
for some prey. I don’t even encounter a squirrel or
two.
Seems like with the last chopping of some small trees
and taller brush even small brown rabbits have left for
denser nearby cover. Then moving back around the pond,
or small lake here in the light weed cover closer in to the
developed area I notice only a few small minnows breaking
the water’s surface. Not even any evidence of the grey
or
blue herons or the couple of little anhinga dot the water.
This is odd as both of these creatures had become regular
resident citizens of the lake and surrounding natural
bush
cover. Somehow the unnatural cropping of the foliage, one
more example of our human touch interrupting nature’s,
leads to pushing our environmental inhabitants further
away.
Whatever became of the idea of man living in peace with our
animal creature and bird companions? So much less of our
caring for the peaceable kingdom vision of our forefathers.
Fred Wolven, Southeastern Florida