Three new poems for the Spring

Three new poems for you today covering everything from the outer planets to the decline of butterflies here on Earth, by John Reinhart, Janka Hobbs, and John Hawkhead. We've split the posting to accommodate the visual element of John's poem.

About our contributors:
* An arsonist by trade, John Reinhart lives on a farmlette in Colorado with his wife and children. He is a Frequent Contributor at the Songs of Eretz and was recently awarded the 2016 Horror Writers Association Dark Poetry Scholarship. His chapbook encircled is available from Prolific Press. More of his work is available at http://www.patreon.com/johnreinhart

* Janka Hobbs grew up in Albuquerque, chasing lizards and feeding bugs to spiders. She now lives in the Puget Sound lowlands, where she studies Botany and Aikido when she's not playing with words.

* John Hawkhead is a writer of haiku and other short poetry forms. His work has been published all over the world in small press magazines and the Internet. His book of poetry and haiku Witness is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes.


the cosmonaut’s heart
by John Reinhart

unconstrained
by earth’s grave
matters, free from the atmosphere
stifling creative love – no stigma
to loneliness, the cosmonaut’s heart
embraces what on earth
we only imagine
though our calculations
assume it


Pluto
by Janka Hobbs

Wears its heart on its sleeve.
Strews its picture all over the internet
Begging to be re-admitted
To the company of planets.
 
Bereft.
Like a parent
Circulating the photo
Of a missing child.
 
Keep up your orbit.
Maybe things will come around.
Balance hope
With a heart of stone.
 

The Decline in Traditional Farming
by John Hawkhead
​
Here the traces of the old butterfly farm
where they milked ranks of White Admirals,
sheared Purple Emperors of rainbow pelts
and ritually slaughtered Camberwell Beauties
for their sweet nectar-fed flesh,
their scales of lost time,
their antennae
for detecting
future desolation.