Free At Last

Free at Last

—Photo by Taylor Graham

FINDING THE SIXPENCE
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

Eggs of many colors are now hidden
in flowered greens along a picket fence.
Easter time, and all the children bidden
in formal dress.  Among carnation scents—
one plastic egg contains the many sixpence.

______________________

SWALLOWS
—Carol Louise Moon
               
Out from the gray
of a hazy sea
a swoop of swallows
glides a colorless sky.
               
In silence they fly
following the tip
of a conductor’s baton.
Golden harps are their souls.

______________________           

MYSTERY OF BEES
—Carol Louise Moon

a gray wall of packed dirt
scraggle trees—dusty
rusty branches with mistletoe
geometric chalk rock
at the base of any
skinny tree trunk

dead leaves and bark
both dark and light
a poison oak bed
red tiny berries
zigzag light and shadow

five red bricks stacked on
a patio; a white-breasted
sparrow flitting about
trees without bees

Guidepups

—Photo by Taylor Graham

SPEAKING OF THE NIGHT
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

This morning the puppies are a heaving


crying mass, wild with longing.


I open the gate, let them out in springtime


green, past untidy lawn, down the cast-


off garden where they walk on stone—


as if they could pull creation back together,


make it flow. What do they know


of elemental forces? The quicksilver moon


breathing in full midnight over a slatted


roof. Owl winging soundless, taloned.


Clasp my hands in wonder that I can’t hold. 

_____________________

SPRING MYSTERIES


—Taylor Graham


No more pie-tins of gruel


for our pups to wade through like swamp


at the edge of life’s currents—



they’ve gulped their bowls clean


of kibble, first meal as night dims to dawn


above the slatted roof.



Now they’re crashed like small dead cars


but not motionless—breathing


in sighs and whimpers that lift the fine



fox-hairs of their cheeks. They sleep


heaped, or scattered as in rabbit-chase,


open-air to weather; sheltered



from winged shadows. It’s spring—time


when dark’s owl and day’s hawk


are out hunting to feed their own young



famished as our puppies for their


lives. We circle like mothers


who can’t get close to their dreams.   

_____________________

AN HOUR BEHIND
—Taylor Graham



The fleeting breath of dawn’s a bell-ringer


calling me outside to such bird commotion,


I thought the leafing oaks were full of griffins,


song too bold for a native nesting species;


gathering force in the filigree of vetch twining


the stockwire fence, and penetrating hidden


passages of ground squirrel, their safe alleys


from rocky hillside to the tenderness of garden.


And I knew I was too late to catch this spring,


though barely beginning on its mystery ways.

 

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

Nothing is too small. Nothing is too "ordinary" or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry.

—Rita Dove

___________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Taylor Graham