Winter

A long December, and frost has swallowed the mirror shores. You have not received my letters—I destroyed them all.

Spring

Heart thaws with the sun and the bright and breezy bobbing dance of tulips. I run back for you, through meadows and mud puddles.

Summer

The early moon shelters the bullfrog’s bellow, serenading the sticky heat of the gloaming. We had our moments, a few more of them.

Autumn

September falls later than usual this year, returning dead leaves to earth just before the snow.

*Publisher’s Note:

The Seasons series refers to three sets of color lithographs by Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939). He created the first set of decorative panels in 1896, which were produced as posters by Parisian printer and publisher, F. Champenois. Because they were so popular, Champenois asked Mucha to create additional sets, which he did in 1897 and 1900.

Designs for two others exist as well (Mucha Foundation: The Seasons).

See also F. Champenois Imprimeur-Éditeur.

Lorette C. Luzajic

is from Toronto, Canada and writes prose poetry, flash, and other forms of little stories. Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, including Gyroscope, Free Flash Fiction, Bright Flash, Club Plum, Red Eft, and Indelible, among others. Her story The Neon Raven won first place in a writing challenge at MacQueen’s Quinterly, and her work has been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her most recent of six collections of prose poems are Pretty Time Machine (2020) and Winter in June (2021). Some of her works have been translated into Urdu.

Lorette is founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review (established 2015), a journal devoted to writing inspired by art. She is also an award-winning visual artist, with collectors in 30 countries from Estonia to Qatar. Visit her at: www.mixedupmedia.ca

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Two Must-Read Books by The Queen of Ekphrasis, commentary in MacQ-9 (August 2021) by Clare MacQueen, with links to additional resources

⚡ Featured Author: Lorette C. Luzajic at Blue Heron Review, with two of her prose poems (“Disappoint” and “The Piano Man”); plus “Poet as Pilgrim,” a review of Pretty Time Machine by Mary McCarthy (March 2020)

⚡ Fresh Strawberries, an ekphrastic prose poem in KYSO Flash (Issue 11, Spring 2019), nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize