Has Your Grammar Gotten Loose?

Lisa's Pumpkins

—Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

HALLOWEEN NIGHT ON THE VINEYARD
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

The air was thick with clouds of gnats.

'Twas Halloween, and very soon

the harvest would be put to vats.

The air was thick with clouds of gnats,

the fruit hung on the vine.  The bats

flew silhouetted 'gainst the moon.

The air was thick with clouds of gnats.

'Twas Halloween, and very soon.

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GHOST MOTHS
—Carol Louise Moon

She calls them ghost moths, white

nearly see-through moths, bobbing

on ghost airstreams, silent in their 

calling out the names of the many

flowers they visit—flowers that

drown in over-watered gardens.

Or weeds that dry out from neglect,

which perish before they can be

named or loved by a butterfly.

These, the ghost moths visit in their

fading, even the cabbage in its

withering.

(first pub. in Brevities, 2010)

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MASK-MAKER'S BIRD

—Taylor Graham, Placerville

High on the workshop wall hung a mask
of carved madrone—a beaked bird.

Raven, eagle, hawk? Hollower than bone
behind its red muscle-grain of wood,
it never spoke, but kept its watch.

A lady opened the door, saw the black-
hole gaze of bird-mask with emptiness

for eyes. How much? she wanted to know.
Not for sale. It was only a family carving.
An instrument chiseled out of song

that begged for lips and fingers forming
sound. No, it was only a wooden bird,

spirit-totem, mankind before he filled his
marrow up with flesh. She wouldn't
understand. The boy at the work-bench

couldn't explain how it looked down
from so high up, so far away. At night,

did it circle above rooftops, beyond
city towers? People locked their mahogany
drawers, keeping things safe inside

their forms. So how could this thing
fly free, its emptiness making sky-music?

It was only the mask of bird.

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.

—J.M. Barrie

_____________________

—Medusa

Our thanks to D.R. Wagner for finding this...