this lantern shows you
the path towards these ruins
you cannot enter

cannot see as they once were
even the Milky Way sends

rumors always out of reach

*Publisher’s Note:

The Milky Way photographer of the year winners are selected every year by the travel blog Capture the Atlas. Among those winners, José Manuel Galván Rangel, with his photograph shot in Extremadura, Spain: Path to the Past.

As he commented about the image: “...Given the quality of the skies in Extremadura, there are numerous Starlight Reserves that can be enjoyed in these uninhabited lands.... I took this photograph in a remote town in the southwest part of this community called Salvatierra de los Barros. In this town that’s practically unheard of by the rest of the world, you’ll find an imposing, privately owned castle that has been standing, under the light of millions of stars, since the fifteenth century.”

Sources: “Milky Way photographer of the year 2022—in pictures” by Matt Fidler in The Guardian (19 May 2022; updated 12 July 2022); and “Astrophotographers Around the World Share Their Best Photos of the Milky Way” by Jessica Stewart in My Modern Met (16 May 2022).

Gary S. Rosin’s

poetry and haiga have appeared, or are forthcoming, in various literary and poetry magazines such as Concho River Review, Eastern Structures, Failed Haiku, Harbinger Asylum, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Poetry24, The Legal Studies Forum, The Lift, The Wild Word, and Visions International; as well as in several anthologies, including contemporary haibun (Volume 17, Red Moon Press, 2022), Faery Footprints (Fae Corp Publishing), Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga (Dos Gatos Press), Texas Poetry Calendar (Kallisto Gaia Press), Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press), and elsewhere.

His poems “Black Dogs” and “Viewing the Dead” were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Two of his poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He is the author of two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing, 1990) and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum, 2008) (offprint).

Selections of Gary’s poetry and photography can be found at his website, 4P Creations: http://4pcreations.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Out of the Haze, collaborative haiga with photograph by George Digalakis and poem by Gary S. Rosin in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 8, June 2021); nominated for, and selected for publication in, Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022)

⚡ Featured Poet: Gary S. Rosin in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 7, March 2021)

⚡ Crossing Kansas in The Wild Word (7 February 2020); includes audio of Rosin reading his poem

⚡ Two Readings: “Apparition” and “Black Dogs” by Gary S. Rosin for Texas Poetry Calendar 2015 at the Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas (20 September 2014); see also Black Dogs here in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022).