The Heron’s Nest (Vol. X, No. 1, March 2008) 
first warm day
we check the mountainside
for wild goatsmore war dead —
an uprooted tree
rides the storm tide………….. by billie wilson – The Heron’s Nest X:1 (March 2008)
It’s hard (but, not impossible) to think of a better way to counteract the record-low temperatures and blustery snowstorms that ushered out February and marked the arrival of March here in Schenectady, than finding a brand new edition of the The Heron’s Nest online this morning. As usual, it has over a hundred admirable new haiku (vetted by THN‘s fussy and trusty editors) to savor with your coffee or tea.
I’ve been thinking lately that I haven’t seen enough new work from our Honored Guests Randy Brooks and Billie Wilson, so I was especially pleased to find a pair from each of them in THN X:1, and they are included in this posting.
dark September day
stillborn given a name
for the funeral
October light
I open my ribs
to pray………….. by randy brooks – The Heron’s Nest X:1 (March 2008)
In addition to Randy and Billie, this first issue from new Managing Editor John Stevenson, includes two poems each from quite few of our f/k/a family of poets: Gary Hotham, Hilary Tann, Laryalee Fraser, Carolyn Hall, Paul M., and even — much to her senryu-saturated surprise and to our pleasure — Roberta Beary. Yu Chang and Alice Fampton also snuck in a haiku each, along with this guy:
All Saints’ Day —
under the sheets
a ghost hides her stash……………………. by David Giacalone – The Heron’s Nest X:1 (March 2008)
However, rather than doing my usual binge-posting, I’m going to invite you to take a look today at the new THN, and to come back over the next week, as I share more poems from their March 2008 edition.
– Don’t forget The Heron’s Nest Readers’ Choice Awards for 2007 
p.s. I do not want the week to pass without mentioning the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr. See his NYT obit; and David Brooks’ column “Remembering the Mentor” (New York Times, Feb. 29, 2008), where Brooks tells how he wrote a parody of Buckley’s book Overdrive, when he was a young smart-aleck, and Buckley offered him a job because of it. Like Robert Semple, I have seldom agreed politically with Bill Buckley, but have always most appreciated the fact that “despite his uncompromising beliefs, Mr. Buckley was firmly committed to civil discourse and showed little appetite for the shrillness that plagues far too much of today’s political discourse.”
In her loving Washington Post tribute this week, Mona Charen quotes Lionel Trilling, who argued in the late 1940’s that conservatives didn’t have ideas so much as “irritable mental gestures,” and contrasts that stereotype with Bill Buckley, “the most gracious man alive.” I hope his life — and the outpouring from people of all ideological and political persuasions — will serve as a lesson to those who seem to believe that anger, ugliness, resentment and intolerance are persuasive or mandatory stances from which to address the public on matters of politics and ideology.