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Halcyon Days 2021—Issue 22
Founder, Monique Berry | Hamilton On Canada
Cover Image by Gabriela Piwowarska—Pixabay; Inside photo is nataliazakharova—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days Magazine
ISSN: 2291-0255
Frequency: Quarterly
Publisher | Designer: Monique Berry
Contact Info
http://halcyondaysmagazine.blogspot.ca
Twitter: @1websurfer
monique.editor@gmail.com
Special Notices
Halcyon Days has one time rights.
See website for subscription details.
No photocopies allowed.
Contributors
Bios
Bruce Levine
8 Ebb and Flow
23 Transitions of the Seasons
24 The Beach
25 Surrender
26 Yard Saleing
Carolyn Chilton Casas
6 Ephemeral Youth
10 Together in the Evening Light
11 The Pickers
Dr. Bijoyini Maya
7 Dreaming of You
Emory D. Jones
4 Golden Summer
16 Summer Humm
17 Living Lantern
Ingrid Bruck
20 Aili, It’s You I Like
21 Footsteps
Karen Peacock
13 Emerald Star
Monique Berry
27 Halcyon Days Cafe
Nolo Segundo
15 On My Way to the Ballet
18 Memories Travel Without the Weight of Time
19 The Old Wedding Album
Robert S. C. Cutler
5 Haiku
14 Pianist’s Passion
9 Heartland
22 New Brighton
Bruce Levine has spent his life as a
writer of fiction and poetry and as a
music and theatre professional. A
2019 Pushcart Prize Poetry nominee, a
2021 Spillwords Press Awards winner,
the Featured Writer in WestWard
Quarterly Summer 2021 and his bio is
featured in “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020.”
Bruce has over three hundred works published on over
twenty-five on-line journals including Ariel Chart,
Spillwords, The Drabble; nearly seventy print books
including Poetry Quarterly, Haiku Journal, Tipton
Poetry Journal; Halcyon Days and Founder’s
Favourites (on-line and print) and his shows have been
produced in New York and around the country. His
work is dedicated to the loving memory of his late
wife, Lydia Franklin. A native Manhattanite, Bruce
now lives and writes in Maine. Visit him
at www.brucelevine.com
Carolyn Chilton Casas is a Reiki
Master and teacher, a student of
metaphysics and philosophy. Her
favorite themes for writing are healing,
wellness, awareness, and the spiritual
journey. Carolyn’s stories and poems
have appeared in Energy, Journey of the Heart,
Odyssey, Reiki News Magazine, Snapdragon, The Art
of Healing, The Edge and in other publications. You
can read more of Carolyn’s work on Instagram at
mindfulpoet_ or contact her at ceccasas@aol.com.
Dr. Bijoyini Mukherjee dedicates all
her creative endeavours to Shakthi and
her mother through her pen-name
Bijoyini Maya. Her professional
expertise includes public relations,
teaching, storytelling, research, softskills
training, content writing, editing,
and spiritual counselling. She has published articles on
New Zealand literature and ecocritism; short stories
and poems in The Text, The Criterion, BlazeVox and
other online platforms. This is one of her rare works in
collaboration, otherwise she prefers being one-womanarmy
experimenting with style and genre.
More bios inside
Golden Summer
By Emery D. Jones
A golden sun illuminates the hills,
and streaks of blue meander in the vales,
they go their way to water hidden dells.
A golden sun illuminates the hills
as lovely walks along the forest trails
remind us of a thousand happy tales.
A golden sun illuminates the hills,
and streaks of blue meander in the vales.
Dr. Emory D. Jones is a retired English teacher who has taught in high school and in several community colleges. He
has four hundred and fifty-five credits including publication in such journals as Writer’s Digest, Smokey Blue Literary
and Arts Magazine, The Light Ekphrastic, Big Muddy; a Journal of the Mississippi River, Three Line Poetry, Auroras
& Blossoms, Pegasus, Halcyon Days Magazine, Falling Star Magazine, The Cumberland River Review, The Delta
Poetry Review, Calliope, Deep South Magazine, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS.
He lives in Iuka, Mississippi.
Halcyon Days -- 2021 Issue 22 22 | | 4
Haiku
By Robert S. C. Cutler
Drinks on the front porch
Conversation is lively
Warm nights of summer
Tomasz Zajda—stock.adobe.com
Robert S. C. Cutler is a United States Air Force veteran and a career Aerospace worker. He writes in the genres of
Science Fiction/ Horror and is the author of two short stories and Five novels. His two short stories, The Atonement and
The Treaty, were both published by the Webzine Aphelion. Robert’s first two novels, Resurrection and A whisper in the
Shadows, were published independently. His latest three novels, Subprimeval, Hypothermia, and Zygote were written for
and published by the Webzine and publisher Big World Network. Robert’s poem The Last Breath of Summer was
recently published in December 2020 by Founder’s Favourites.
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 5
Ephemeral Youth
by Carolyn Chilton Casas
Warm Indian summer evening
in Avila. My husband and I sit,
up on the cliff, car windows open,
looking out over persimmon
skies, eating child scoop
ice cream cones.
A young man runs down the beach
and does repeated handstands
at water’s edge;
a young woman in bikini
takes selfies as waves spill
over her.
I wish to reach down
and tell them
Good for you!
Enjoy your youth-filled
puppy bodies. They are
ephemeral. As is all.
StockSnap—Pixabay.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 21 | 6
Dreaming of You
By Dr. Bijoyini Maya and Arijit Ghose
The pink of your cheeks
The sheen of your chin
The black of your brows
The wonderment in your eyes…
The rejoice in your voice
The deep breaths that u take
The long silences you walk
Along with our hands clenched
Tripping through forests and streams
And together the stars we gaze
Oh the ending is the beginning of romance!
And one of life’s nuance!!
olgagomenyuk—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 7
Ebb and Flow
By Bruce Levine
The frost of the chill winter wind
Dissipates as spring supersedes
Buds burst forth on trees
In anticipation of the warmer clime
Forsythia blossom in profusion
Casting a happy aura
With their yellow flowers
As spring days drift along
With cool breezes and warm sunshine
April showers and May flowers
Framing the landscape
In a panorama of color
Trees in full leaf
Make an umbrella of shade
A respite from the increasing warmth
That gradually succumbs to summer
Filled with crystalline mornings
And lazy afternoons
As children dance in water spouts
And cool drinks refresh the soul
Time to reflect
Before fall returns
And the cycle resumes
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 8
Hans Braxmeier—stock.adobe.com
Heartland
By Robert S. C. Cutler
A golden wave ripples across the plains.
The bluest skies stretch for eternity.
A perfect peace fills my heart.
Clouds start to billow to the west;
a threat that is forming yet not realized.
A golden wave ripples across the plains.
Birds burst into flight over the fields.
The perfume of rain wafts on the wind.
A perfect peace fills my heart.
On the horizon, the sky is obscured.
Ominous, black, and forbidding clouds.
A golden wave ripples across the plains.
Distant thunder like the beat of a heart;
an immanent warning of what is to come.
A perfect peace fills my heart.
Curtains of rain refresh the fields.
The Flash of lightning illuminates the darkness.
A golden wave ripples across the plains.
A perfect peace fills my heart.
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 9
chesterF—stock.adobe.com
Together in the Evening Light
By Carolyn Chilton Casas
In the soft light
of longer evening hours,
we sit down
at our rough pine table
with warm plates of grilled fish and
steamed vegetables.
I glance past my husband
and see two deer
lying on the grass—
a doe, her eyes locked
with mine and her fawn,
head twisted back resting
on his shoulder as he sleeps.
She does not startle
when I stand to bring
the butter, pour the wine;
they are frequent guests.
In a bougainvillea next
to the window, a blue jay
has been daring in and out,
carrying twigs to knit
her nest. Now she hops
in bushes near the deer,
then flutters to a stop
on top of the fawn.
When there is no complaint,
she begins to pick at his
molting hair,
his humble offering
to the blue babies
about to come.
Melinda Fawver—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 10
The Pickers
By Carolyn Chilton Casas
The squirrels have not yet found
the figs. They stole every single apricot
on the newly planted tree in days,
even though the roots are fortressed
to keep gophers out, the branches
fenced to protect deer from foraging.
Then the hellions pilfered half the plums;
I’d see them scurrying up the trunk,
running down with purple,
ripe ones in their overstretched mouths.
When they had eaten all the orchard’s
harvest (the figs were not yet ripe)
the squirrels made do with
their last resort—the orange tree near the house.
I laughed to see one push a globe
up the hill toward her underground den,
maneuvering it with nose and neck,
only to have the sphere roll back down,
her darting after it, to start all over again—
a modern-day furry Sisyphus.
Mostly I have given up and buy my fruit
at the farm stand around the corner.
But figs are my favourite;
I’ve rescued five ripe ones so far.
Maybe the squirrels missed them,
don’t like the taste, or they feel remorse.
Returning up the road from a walk, I spy
a squirrel scout peeking down the driveway;
our eyes meet, then he takes off,
sprinting full speed to warn his brethren,
Here she comes, down the holes!
Angelo Giordana—Pixabay.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 11
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 21 | 12
Jasmin Merdan—stock.adobe.com
Evening Star
by Karen Peacock
"Evening Star" is part of an as-yet unpublished collection of linked short stories. Each vignette describes a brief moment from 2125
AD all the way back to 90,000 BCE. "Evening Star" takes place in the late 18th century, but the reminder to slow down and
appreciate the beautiful and the fleeting is timeless.
The children have been ignoring Charlotte's calls to come inside so she stomps out to the garden. Their supper
is getting cold and the young mother is ready to let them know just how irritated she is. But it's that honeyed
hour when everything looks its best, so Charlotte stops to watch their curious game.
“A new one,” she thinks.
Stella stands in the middle, directing the three little ones. At 10, she is already as tall as Charlotte and her
yellow frock is a bit too short. Her hair has darkened but the smaller children are still blond. They try their best
to do their sister’s bidding.
Little Gregory is closest to Stella and twirls around while simultaneously circling her.
“Don’t get too close! I’ll burn you up,” warns his sister.
A yard away, Ruthellen performs the same action. She falls down in a fit of hiccups and giggles.
“Get up, Venus,” orders Stella.
“I’m dizzy. I can’t,” says Ruthellen.
“You must. You’re the evening star!”
Ruthellen scrambles up and resumes her rotating and revolving, almost running into Oliver, who is playing at
being Mars. (Nobody wanted to be Earth.)
Satisfied at last with the performance of her brothers and sisters, Stella sings her favorite verse of her favorite
hymn.
I sing the wisdom that ordained
The sun to rule the day.
The moon shines full at God’s command
And all the stars obey.
A shiver runs through Charlotte. Her daughter’s song melds with the buzzing bees, the whispering leaves, the
thump of her own heart. She offers up a silent prayer of thanksgiving in the general direction of the evening’s
fluffy pink clouds. If Charlotte has ever been this happy she can’t remember when.
Her reverie is interrupted when Gregory veers out of his orbit and bumps into his mother.
“Mercury, come back to the sun this instant,” calls Stella.
The little boy hugs his mother, then unsteadily heads back to his sister.
“Gregory, why are your eyes closed?” asks Charlotte.
“Planets can’t see because they don’t have eyes.”
“Well, little boys and girls do,” laughs Charlotte. “And they also have tummies. Come along, it’s time for
supper.”
Charlotte finds herself humming Stella’s hymn as the group makes their way up the garden path.
“Will you read to us after we eat?” asks Oliver.
“Of course, says his mother. “Let’s have a race to the house.”
As usual, everyone, including Charlotte, takes off at top speed. Then all but the youngest slow down at the end
of the race. Gregory wins again.
Karen Peacock is a writer, artist, and designer from Frederick, Maryland in the U.S. Most of her published work has
been newspaper and magazine features, and she especially loves writing flash fiction and poetry. She has taught
writing workshops at Aromatic and TAG/The Artists Gallery. To see more of her work,
visit peacockartanddesign.com and tagtheartistsgalleryfrederick.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 21 | 13
Pianist’s Passion
By Robert S. C. Cutler
Floating effortlessly above the keys,
delicate fingers dance to music that fills the air.
Felted hammers strike golden strings,
melodic tones echo through the house.
Notes on paper appearing randomly placed,
tell a story from the composer’s heart.
Brought to life through masterful interpretation,
the pianist’s passion weaves a tapestry of emotion.
Miroslava Arnaudova—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 14
On The Way To The Ballet
By Nolo Segundo
The old ladies march
Onto the elevator,
Steadied by their canes,
Each a shrunken frailty
Wrapping an unending
Soul—they are going
To watch young people
Dance dances of grace
And beauty, while re-
Calling their own beauty
Long dissolved in the
Acid of time. Yet, they
Are happy—I even joke
With them as I lean on
My own cane: “Come
Ladies! Let’s have a
Foot race!” They all
Laugh, as the young
Girls within their
Tattered frames
Flirt with the potent
Young man hiding
Behind my time-
Marked mask.
For a moment
We all feel a jolt
Of that spark
We call life.
Nolo Segundo, pen name of retired teacher and late-blooming poet, L.J. Carber, 74, married 41 years, has in his 8th
decade been published online/in print in 39 literary magazines in the U.S. U.K., Canada, Romania, and India. In 2020 a
trade publisher released a paperback collection titled THE ENORMITY OF EXISTENCE and in 2021 a 2nd book, OF
ETHER AND EARTH. Both titles reflect the awareness he has had since having an NDE whilst almost drowning in a
Vermont river at 24 and has tried to put into many of his poems: that each of us has a consciousness that predates birth
and survives death, because it exists beyond time and space--the immortal soul.
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 15
Milan Noga reco—stock.adobe.com
Summer Hummm
By Emory D. Jones
The sun’s warm beams
tap earth on the shoulder
with a wake-up call.
Morning glories flash
their dew glinted smiles
and pansies peep from
their hiding places.
Little winged robbers swarm
light on iris and honey-suckle,
sucking nectar. Then they
buzz to the next splash of color
to bathe themselves in delight.
Laden with pollen
and drunk with nectar
they stagger back to the hive.
The whole back yard
lapses into low
harmonic hummm.
WebForU2—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 16
Living Lantern
by Emory D. Jones
Fireflies sparkled like twinkling stars—
we called them lightning bugs.
on a summer evening
we chased them across the yard—
shouting, laughing,
clapping hands,
running them down,
closing our hands around them,
pouring them into a fruit jar until
we made a living lantern.
soupstock—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 17
Memories Travel Without the Weight of Time
By Nolo Segundo
I’m five: lying in bed in the attic room I share
With big brother (though 4 years older, he won’t
Climb the creaky stairs at night unless I go first—
His fear of the dark gives me a secret thrill).
Before leaving for sleepland, I like to watch
The shadows flickering across the ceiling, a kind
Of magic made by the reflected headlights
Of the cars passing in the street three stories below.
At seventeen I’m making out with my first girl
On the plush sofa in her house while her mom
Sleeps upstairs. We are both virgins, both clothed
And naïve. Suddenly, as I lay her down, I come—
My first orgasm as, strangely, I had never jerked off
(a mystery I still cannot fathom), but oh wondrous
It was to leave my body and step briefly into heaven.
First came the girls, then the women, in droves,
For I was tall and fair and good with words, but most
Of all, I could make them laugh. And I loved them all,
in my way, and I could love none of them—for I was
afraid of the binding, the fastness that love demands.
It hollowed me out, this fear, and I could not see the
Utter blackness it led me to—and pain beyond pain.
At 24 I was reborn that moment I wept for the loves,
And love I had lost. I was not a new man, nor a good man,
But I was a beginning man, my soul taking baby steps
Towards God and the glorious love infused universe.
In my 32nd year I stood in the nave of the little Anglo-
Saxon church, waiting as my bride came down the aisle.
She began crying, I began smiling—my happiest day.
Now 35 years later, it is still my happiest day….
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 18
flordigitalartist—stock.adobe.com
The Old Wedding Album
By Nolo Segundo
The young couple who bought the old house
were left having to get rid of all the left-overs,
as the husband called them—the realtor
had told them this was usual with estate sales:
the owner was usually old, usually a widow,
-- so all the stuff the now dead couple had
gahered over 40 or 50 or 60 years would have
to collected and taken away. Once Goodwill
might have come for it but it costs too much
nowadays to send out the big trucks-- so now
you must pay somebody to come and get it,
the realtor told the young people-- but, hey,
you got the place prettty cheap, right?
So they went room by room, this pair of
love birds barely off their honeymoon.
At first it was a game—look at this, one
would say! What crap! the other would
exclaim, or what the heck is that, if
the thing seemed old, pre-cyber age.
Don’t know, toss it, was the usual reply,
and happily they threw away old dishes
and clothes and broken lamps and a whole
lot of furniture: tables and chairs and
something called a dresser, all carried
to a large trash container waiting
patiently like a visiting sarcophagus
to swallow a once lived life….
And atop the heap of unwanted things
lay an unopened wedding album,
with a professional’s photos of
a handsome young man and his
beautiful young bride, resplendent
in white, each smiling as though
it were the happiest day of their
still fresh lives….
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 19
o_april—stock.adobe.com
It’s you I like, Aili
By Ingrid Bruck
It’s you I like, Aili.
“No” is your two-year-old mantra.
You say, “Bye Nana,”
when I arrive to see you.
It’s you I like, little Aili,
Your dad brought you to my house,
you kept repeating, “Drive the car,”
missing home and mama.
A mash up singer,
you mix bits and pieces
of “Twinkle Little Star,”
singing your favorite song.
A foodie in training,
you suck drinks from a sippy-cup,
nibble on cheese, fruit
and unsweetened fresh treats
that your parents dole out
in plastic bowls.
You pretend-feed your stuffies
with plastic food you prepare,
tuck them under a blanket for naps.
In the bathtub, soft-voiced,
you growl in warm water,
guide a gentle battle,
a tyrannosaurus in one hand
bites an allosaurus on the rim of the tub,
each strike more a hug than a clobber.
You fill your own happy space.
Ever-present thumb plugged in
you sit at the side on the daycare floor.
At home, you cuddle against your parents,
let big sister stroke your hair,
cocooned in family love.
Our family’s baby,
you’re my third and last grandchild.
It’s you I like, Aili.
Ingrid Bruck lives in Pennsylvania Amish country, a landscape that inhabits her poetry. She’s a retired library director with a
passion for short forms. Current work appears in Halibut, Failed Haiku, Drifting Sand and Heliosparrow. Poetry
website: www.ingridbruck.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 20
Courtesy of Ingrid Bruck
Footsteps
By Ingrid Bruck
After: Mary Lindberg playing Grieg’s Nocturne
in A-Minor at Guest House in Connecticut
Feet lift and fall in a steady pace
Step over and around scattered rocks
Soles press on uneven ground
Pass onto a cushion of soft moss
Listen to one bird’s twitter
Answer another
Pause next to a tree
Take the path along a standing pool
Feel the brush of grass against shoe-leather
Lollygag up a gentle slope
Reach the hilltop
Meander down the other side
Enter the woods where more birds sing
Fill the shadows
Notes play colors
in your mind
Taddeo—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 21
New Brighton
By Robert S. C. Cutler
Dense fog hovers over the bay.
Water, turbulent green crashes upon the shore.
The beginning of a brand-new day.
The screech of seagulls as they soar.
Pelicans divebomb the kelp thick waters.
Dense fog hovers over the bay.
Sea lions’ heads bob like corks on the ocean.
A single wave smooths the water-logged sand.
The beginning of a brand-new day.
A couple walks slowly along the water’s edge;
their child laughs as they splash through the surf.
Dense fog hovers over the bay.
The morning sun breaks through the clouds,
promising the hope of warmer weather.
The beginning of a brand-new day.
Fingers of mist stretch out toward the cliffs,
fading just as they reach the pines.
Dense fog hovers over the bay.
The beginning of a brand-new day.
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 22
paula—stock.adobe.com
Transition of the Seasons
By Bruce Levine
The transition of seasons
Came slowly this year
Dreary days following
One another
With flashes of sun
And warmth interspersed
Scant time for walks
And visits to the sea
And seaport towns
Sipping hot chocolate
Watching gulls cross the horizon
And swans near the shore
Holding hands and window shopping
As the breeze passes through the town
With the hope of warmer days
And long walks in the sun
Watching the tide shift
Bringing waves against the sand
As our dog climbs the rocks
And we sit and watch and hope
That the transition of seasons
Hastens more quickly
From dreary days
With bursts of warmth
And one spring day
Gives way to summer
Kevin Oke Photograph—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 23
The Beach
By Bruce Levine
Waves breaking against the rocky beach
Pebbles smoothed by millennia of tides
And driftwood surrenders to the waves
Seagulls watch as they glide across the expanse
Searching for food in the water below
And the tide transforms the beach
As it ebbs and flows
And another day enters into history
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22| 24
olgagomenyuk—stock.adobe.com
Surrender
By Bruce Levine
a wind-blown dune
against a rock-bound coast
waves drifting near
overlapping curls of foam
tempting the tide
to reveal the sands
of ancient times
to surrender to new enigmas
a piece of driftwood
caught in a stratum of seaweed
tossed on the current
waiting to be washed ashore
a sculpture excavated
by droplets of water
melded into systematic molecules
like Michelangelo’s chisel
hardened by coalescence
making fibrous tissue
of tree limbs surrender
passages outlined by seagulls
floating overhead
searching the horizon
as they climb ever higher
toward the sun
yet unlike Icarus
they remain careful
not to get burned
finding balance
on currents of air
like the tide below
they surrender to freedom
Jearu—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 25
Yard-Saleing
By Bruce Levine
Forty miles to go
Sunny day to share
Start and stop
Signs often flop
Company profound
Finding food to eat
Lots of stuff to see
Roads to try
Not knowing why
Getting lost and found
Silly things to find
Happy thoughts compare
Hills to climb
Goals are refined
Calories rebound
Looking over things
Books to skim galore
Bric-a-brac
Don’t miss a rack
Clothes to try renowned
Perfect finds in store
Seeking a new home
‘Til next week
When hide and seek
Memories compound
Ennira—stock.adobe.com
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 26
Halcyon Days Café
By Monique Berry
Sit, sip and relax with me in a place that stirs the
imagination—tables are softly lit with word lanterns, and walls
are decorated with contributors’ poems and stories. Halcyon
Days Café captures memories through the lens of peace and
beauty. Doors are always open.
frabimbo—stock.adobe.com
Monique Berry lives in Hamilton, Canada. She is an avid reader (by heart), 62 (by years alive,
born on Canada Day), French (by design), Canadian (by birth), Ontario (by residency), born-again
(by faith) and loved by God and those who know her. She is most complimented on her beautiful
handwriting. Monique is the founder of Halcyon Days and Founder’s Favourites, and is producing
a new creative writing magazine scheduled to be launched in November 2021.
Halcyon Days - 2021 Issue 22 | 27
Swing in
summer,
soar to
halcyon
heights