Slightly Bitter Rounds of Being by Jack Phillips*

Time picks up speed as it rounds the corner hopeful at once a little sad not to mourn the closing in of autumn but for another orbit come and almost gone. Thoreau gets credit for to drink of every season (as still he dominates kitchen calendars) but daily we live the lay of the land take nature in the raw let us write our own lines to swing the summer round keep the marble rolling under our feet, the purplish fruits of being a little bitter today but always worth the bite. 

^{*The poem above is a prose poem — a 19th-Century hybrid poetic form that allows the reader to make breaks in line and rhythm. Chelsea’s poem below is lined free-verse, a form that allows the breaks and spaces to multiply layers of meaning. In each case we invite you, dear reader, to write these poems with us in the ways that you bite and savor them. Both of these poems were composed with our mouths full of wild plums on a late summer saunter. Find wild fruits to flavor your eyes and tongues but only taste a few and leave the rest to nourish the wild.}