Summer lingers on,
in butterflies’ bright wingbeats
and bee-bowed flowers.
Succulent berries
ripen in golden hedgerows,
cobwebbed with dawn mist.
Birds seek southern sun,
while industrious squirrels
cache abundant hoards.
Brisker winds rattle
apples down: speckled, blemished,
but lusciously sweet.
Children kick through leaves,
giggling, hurling handfuls—
pretending they’re snow.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
The forgotten pumpkins are black with rot.
Dogberries squish and bleed underfoot.
The trees have been battered, standing half-naked and disheveled, robbed of their beauty.
Brown leaves scurry across the pavement, finding refuge together.
The smell of death and pumpkin spice lattes is in the air.
This is the end.
Deirdre Smith has dabbled in writing for as long as she can remember. She is a part-time Guidance Counsellor and a full-time mom. She resides in the always colorful St. John’s, Newfoundland.
A single breath of crisp fall air. A single golden leaf, fluttering, beckoning. A single magpie stoically ignoring. A single squirrel chattering, proclaiming from its favorite branch. A still brown hare peering from its borough. A single step, and then another, away from summer, stepping into the earth’s annual glory.
Eileen finds autumn days uplifting, comforting, and full of joy and hope.
It’s fall, and nature is strutting her stuff. “Look at me,” says the tree; “Carve me,” says the pumpkin; “Press me,” says the apple. I close my eyes, remembering the smell of burning leaves, the chill air filled with excitement—as though tomorrow I’ll be shopping for brand-new school shoes.
A prolific writer, Carol Reeves is loving the freedom and challenges of 50 word stories. Her memoir, “All the Little Miracles,” was published last year. She often writes of the privilege and vicissitudes of aging.
Warm air brings new beginnings; tree blossoms bloom with adolescent excitement for summer love. The day is spent in nervous anticipation of our first date, and when darkness comes I slink out my window and step outside, endless possibilities ahead. Our hands link in the darkness. My heart flutters. “Hi.”
S wrote this story.
Maple is flirting with me.
I glimpse her at windows as she ducks out of sight, catching only a swirl of scarlet skirts. She leaves little crimson-wrapped gifts outside my door.
I love her. I wish I knew that she loved me… but Miss Sugar Maple never says a word.
Maria speaks for the trees and, of course, those who love them.
It was the color of fall, when the gilded sun rises warmly in the southeast corner of the sky. It was the time of beautiful death, when all the trees catch fire, awaiting the spiteful winter chill to put them out.
I didn’t always hate the fall. Not before her.
Andrew is an unpublished fiction writer in the Washington area. In his spare time he enjoys pens, pads, word processors and pudding.
She seduces me each September—
warm summer kisses
tasting of frost and smoke;
her voluptuous dance,
flamboyant raiment discarded
piece by piece,
revealing more and more of bewitching nakedness.
But it always ends the same—icy tears each December.
Still, I know I
will fall
with fall
in love
again.
Tony Jasnowski teaches English at Bellevue University. Can there be any doubt which season is his favorite?
The aged apple tree is barren as days become colder.
The sweet aroma of cider, from remaining windfall fruit, floats on a chilly breeze that ruffles through brittle leaves still clinging to gnarled branches.
I have gleaned all I can, leaving behind a harvest feast for deer who visit nightly.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
He took her for a drive in the countryside, down a gravel road, past forests of red maples and golden oaks. Fading sunshine cast elongated shadows.
No one spoke.
He stopped the car, got out, and looked into her large, illuminated eyes.
“Still the prettiest coupe I know,” he said.
Krystyna Fedosejevs writes poetry, short stories and Flash Fiction. She has had several poems and flash fiction stories published. She is stationed in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, although she loves to travel around the world.