WHAT’S TRUE

KRISTIN W. DAVIS

It’s easier not to notice the first dogwood blossom, the flute-call of the wood thrush. It’s easier not to stalk the sublime, muscle the word, the softest slant rhyme. It’s easier not to write it down. But the eastern woods seduce in springtime. I allow myself to wander in the wet moss.

Sun bolts sideways between hemlocks, alights on spider threads tethered to bark, fibers waving in a breeze, making the very air visible.

That’s when I glimpse the trailhead, my muddy bootprints weeping behind.

KRISTIN W. DAVIS is a former journalist and earned an MFA in poetry in 2022 from the University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Banyan Review, Passager, THINK, and the Bay to Ocean anthology, and on the Split this Rock blog and Maine Public Radio’s Poems from Here. Her work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and earned the International Human Rights Arts Festival’s Creators of Justice Award.

LILY OF THE VALLEY, TIFFANY TUCHEK

TIFFANY TUCHEK is an emerging writer, photographer and watercolor artist. She is a former elementary teacher with a B.A. in Education from Michigan State University. She lives in Michigan with her husband and rescue pets: two dogs and five parrots. Her interests include yoga, baking, and walks with her family. She enjoys reflecting the powerful and fragile aspects of nature through micropoetry. Her haiku have appeared in Humana Obscura, Rockvale Review, Tiny Seeds Literary Journal, and Plants & Poetry Journal. Other poems and photography have been published or are forthcoming in Beyond Words Literary Magazine and Culinary Origami Journal