Poet Tree Town

by JD Waggy

The sky burst open, a popped balloon dumping water with childish hands
onto the unsuspecting city rolling past below–summer rainstorms in Michigan
obey no one.  The whoosh of the full-bellied clouds drowned out the steady

by Paul Bernstein

Seared by the thick
red sorrow of sunsets,
I, stick-shape,  
driven by jukeboxes,

The Huron River at Barton Dam
by Leigh Sugar

     Running into the almost-noon sun just
the angle so my whole face squints
like I am smiling – which I am –

by Emma Behrendt

That janky smoke detector sounds off every time you cook pancakes on a Saturday morning.
And you can only lock the back door if you put your hip into it.
I’ve grown accustomed to hearing the mumbles of your conversations through the French doors and knowing

by Joseph Neely

My wife remembers the boys
chanting his name at school
Reese! Reese!

by Theo Poling

You’re home when
you can find Division Street,
making a straight shot back
through traffic that
could be
worse.

by Shannon Daniels

Again the snow coats everything here,
driving for the first time down Washtenaw.

by Mike Zhai

The years are not the same to each — in roots
Something awakens, knowing winter’s past,
The soil’s turning warm — the signal shoots
Up toward the tips of branches: Time at last
To bud and bloom! The messenger’s delay

by Molly Pershin Raynor

i love how the tulips come first. then the lilies of the valley,
their perfumed necks bent like women in grief. i love how the 
peonies unpeel their petticoats & shake their bracelets of ants.
how as a child i learned to count time by flowers, not numbers.  

by Maia Elsner

I sit in my Midwest apartment
amid another snowstorm

warning. A friend once said winter
is a time of preparation. I was

crying. The abrupt sting of thinly
chopped onions blurring white

by Ellen Stone

(at Saginaw Forest)
Hanging in the air
bald-faced hornet nest,
rags in the crab tree now
while white oak leaves
still left curl into corpses—

by Onna Solomon

You’ve been standing here so long,
I say to the man selling za’atar
at the farmers market booth beside

by Mouna Ammar

It steadies me to witness the way
this river’s broad shoulders do not shy away
from carrying
the growing weight of piled snow.

by A.H. Kim

I saw the branches on the curb
Victims of the recent ice storm
Twisted piles of splintery wood
Waiting to be turned into chips

by Logan Corey

the summer we turned water sprite
was late, June
already
full grown
teasing July
to cross the room,

by M.H. Prindle

It’s mid-December.
The holiday scene looks more and less the same.
There’s the tree, 
well-seasoned and scented.

by Stephanie Heit

succulents

clubmoss twitters

showy medinilla
showy pink berries slurp

by Claire Weiner

Today, on a leafy path along the Huron,
on the cusp of fall, where sumac
and dogwood entwine in flaming dance,

By Elizabeth Schmuhl

The fox on the trail
in fall the leaves

by Stephan Soloman

Here is where the Huron welcomes all who come to see
Where Shakespeare comes alive again amongst the hickories
Follow close the peonies each year better than before
And enter fast a magic world behind a fairy door.