a three-pass alchemy for Meredith Ann Fuller and Catherine Ferguson
The poem:
The source: “Boundary Waters,” from Image & Poetry.
Image: Fisher, by Catherine Ferguson (click here for the image)
Text: The Assisted Living Beaver Lodge, by Meredith Ann Fuller
Microseason Nº 33, July 17-21 — for Ann Collins
The poem:
Sources:
The poem and the first two lines of the haiku above are from Wild Orchid, Microseason Nº 33, July 17-21,by Ann Collins , posted July 19, 2026, on her excellent substack Microseasons.
The last line of the haiku is from Taka sunawachi waza o narau (Microseason Nº 33, July 17-21), also known as when “Hawks learn to fly”
even if birds are not – for Jessica Roeder
Source material: “Ideas are as real” by Jessica Roeder. Her new chapbook of erasure poems, Trees Full of Walking, is now available from Dancing Girl Press.
Roeder’s inspiration: “a line (these ideas, which were also realities) chosen at random from Molly Lynch’s novel The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman.”
The subtitle about birds not being real is a reference to a satirical conspiracy theory, Birds Aren’t Real. But then again … have you ever seen a baby pigeon?
Here is the poem:
I don’t generally either save or talk about outtakes, but “Ideas are as real as” spoke to me, over and over. And then over some more. Here are some of the outtakes.
a two-pass alchemy for Lisa Jensen
The invitation: Lisa Jensen asked “What Do You Make of This?”
The poem:
For more of her work, go to Wild Ground.
The inspiration: War Erasure #7, by Josh Datko , from his excellent series of War Erasures, where he takes “a Banksy-like spray can to war propaganda poems.”
The War Erasures also include War Erasure #4, the inspiration for war and peace, which I now wish I had titled “war and peace #4.”
Know that the poppies in “war and peace #7” are watered by singing and sunlight, not by the blood of soldiers.
As with the paired #4 poems, the paired #7 poems come from the same source material.
for LeeAnn Pickrell and her sweetie
The poem:
Source material: LeeAnn Pickrell’s poem “Strawberry Moon”
“Strawberry Moon” appeared along with “Winter Moon” in the June 2026 issue of Verse-Virtual.
for Jennifer Franklin
The poem:
Source: “Memento Mori: Bird Head” from If Some God Shakes Your House, poems by Jennifer Franklin.
Memento mori is Latin for remember that you have to die.
Poetry reminds us that we also have to live.
Life and Death Contrasted, circa 1770
Courtesy of Public Domain Review.
a five-pass alchemy with 120 possibilities
Here is one poem:
Here is another:
There are 118 more possiblities.
The text:
More on Walter Horatio Pater.
The entire text of The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry.
