The crane rises high, spreads it’s broad wings, then sweeps them
quickly down its extended legs before crouching low; wings wrapped
tightly around its wide nest.
=====
Summer 2021
July Junctures Karen Pierce Gonzalez
It is the heavy hours we count between dawns that catch us. Mouths open, garden leaves yawn. Cabbage heads shred into salad memories of when we last spoke, dial tone closing off the Canadian border of our call.
In this darkness, midnight laces its forgotten way across remembering. First a poem then a story we tell ourselves and each other in moments taken from time.
Going for Gold Tina Riddle Deason
Sportscaster announces:
Skipping up to the felt-covered raft launch, here
comes Tina. She’s got her inner tube from John Deer looped through her arm. The
audience quiets as she slips the tube around her waist. She tugs her ponytail,
and wiggles her nose plug, making sure both are secure, I suppose—and there she
goes
A running jump from one end of the raft to the other,
she bends her knees and launches herself a whopping 10 inches high projecting
her a good foot away from the raft—
She goes to make her landing in the lake, the fish
quiver, water ripples in the breeze—
And Swoosh! A big splash-enough water in the air to
shower the judges, by gosh—
Now Tina grabs the inner tube with both hands, her
body snug in its center and--- oh, folks, here she goes, she’s spinning. The
water is swirling and it’s a perfect10 from all the wet judges today, AND USA
TAKES THE GOLD!
Whoop!
Spring Legend of the Ladybug and the Lambs Ginny Lee Taylor
In a grassy field, a small, haughty ladybug with cherry red
wings flew from sun-kissed clover to sprouting poppy eating aphids for
breakfast. The sun was just coming up when she lighted near the newborn lambs
suckling their mothers’ milk. The ladybug said to the lambs, “Well, at least I
have to work up an appetite for my breakfast, flying from clover to poppy looking
for aphids. All you have to do is walk to your mother’s teat and drink.”
The lambs, with their full bellies and fluffy white coats,
said to the little ladybug, “That may be so. But at least we are bigger than
you. Our hooves even at this age could crush a caterpillar or even a haughty
ladybug like you.”
The ladybug retorted, “True, I am small and easily missed in
a world teeming with buzzy bees and fragrant clover, but I can fly like the
wind almost to the clouds, while your hooves keep you firmly on the ground.
Besides, the farmer likes to see me in her garden.”
The lambs replied, “We are lambs, not meant to fly but to
frolic in these fields, drink our mother’s milk, and grow big and round. The
farmer likes us best because we give her the wool off our backs which her
partner spins into yarn and knits into sweaters that keep them both warm when
winter comes.”
“Hmmmph,” said the ladybug. “Well, at least I don’t smell
worse than a wet dog when it rains!”
And with that, she flew off and straight into a robin’s
mouth who carried the little ladybug home to its nest of twigs and chirping
baby robins. The hungry baby robins ate the ladybug, and thought she tasted
like honey.
There.
With your newspaper
Censored
By your lack of sight
There you are.
Glass ashtray
I pick it up
W
E
I
G
H
T
E
D
Pressing one side against my eye
The kaleidoscope of you
Come alive.
I would pack fresh snow on your chair
Cathedrals of memories
(frozen)
Against the leather
Every time you would sit in it
And every time--
“Here.” you would beckon.
Fingertips trace along my face
“Beautiful. Just like her.”
(how I wish I could have known)
When the white silence visits
(still)
I pack a snowman on Sunday’s newspaper
Watching the words bleed,
I reach out to the vast empty
My fingers
Like your fingers
Tracing the frown lines of my mother
Come alive.
======
Pumpkin Tree CM Riddle (priestesstina.com)
“Mr.
Maynard and I moved into this house when we got married. Over the fence, in the
neighbor’s yard, grew that fruit tree.” Ms. Maynard pointed her bumpy knuckle
toward the window.
I paid attention to Mrs. Maynard’s tale,
for it was me who asked about persimmons after she’d made me a cup of cocoa.
“The plant, lush in summer, and
barren in late winter, has the audacity to produce marvelous fruits—spheres of
sunshine filled with sweet flesh—just before Christmastime.” Mrs. Maynard’s
eyebrows knitted together. Then, her hands balled into fists. “I’d put away the
ghostly decorations and toss the carved pumpkins into the compost heap, then
the fruit would appear. It seemed the persimmons popped out at autumn’s first frost;
they’d hang there, taunting me.”
Shaken by Mrs. Maynard’s tone, and
not understanding how fruit could upset her, I nearly rattled my cup, tipping
the cocoa onto her fancy rug, but I stopped it in time.
“Before I got married, it was Albert
who I loved.” She peered at me. Perhaps she thought I’d judge her. Then, her
eyes glazed over. “While taking a drive in the country with my true love, coasting
miles up and over hillsides, around curves, and through tunnels—we came to a
sudden stop. In a small field we saw what appeared to be a pumpkin tree. We
laughed uncontrollably once we realized it was a bounty of persimmons.”
Mrs. Maynard’s voice fell. “We
declared our love that day, admiring the silly fruit. That winter, Albert enlisted
with the army; he’d never returned. In springtime, I married Mr. Maynard. So, I
can’t say I like or dislike persimmons, missy, because of bitter-sweet memories
of Albert which haunt me when the harvest dangles from my neighbor’s tree.”
======
It is cold and damp outside; the smell – the feel – of ozone heralds the coming rain. On my bookshelves are the vestiges of the recent winter holidays – cards with images of little towns nestled in snow, silent forests dressed in white, and horse-drawn or reindeer-drawn sleighs.
But these images do not mean winter to me. For me, it’s the damp cold that goes to the bones. It’s the cats wanting to go out and then coming in again too soon, licking their paws that smell of damp earth to try to warm them. Winter is the slap of wet leaves against the window from the bitter wailing winter winds.
And winter is seeking warmth in mulled cider and cinnamon, in hot chocolate with a dollop of ice cream – there is never whipped cream when you need it. And it’s cuddling under blankets – and of course it’s setting out lots of candles for when the power goes out, which it does every winter.
Snow is a winter vacation you take, not the normal winter routine of this place tempered by latitude and proximity to the ocean. Snow is a curiosity, a thing apart.
============
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