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THE BOY ON THE HILL
by Scott Thomas After supper, While his mother washed dishes And his father fixed the light, The boy on the hill looked up. A sled trail, weeks old, Crumbled beneath his boots. Starlight . . . First star was a porch light, Higher though, slung in a neighbor's tree. Venus, maybe, with its sulphur falls And billowed sky. Pluto, his favorite, was too dim. In Hammond's Map of the Solar System, It appeared dull and dusky like a puffball— Pluto— The sun never greater Than a comma of light, The windows always webbed with frost, And, beyond, just margin. The sky arched so high above the boy then, Its pink aperture gaping, The distance so very vast Between the cold hillsides . . . Now the winter sky still waves its palm Tattooed with marble planets and cycling stars, But the door to the shed is frozen shut With his toolbox inside. "Time to start again," he thinks, Crackling through the yard With steaming kettle, "To add another watcher To the world," As if the snow-covered hill, Shale-pink sunset, diamond star Would ever line up again, As if his son will ever think to watch (Of course, he will now be expected to watch) And, having looked, Would not turn to the stoop Where the cold collie barks. |
DARK ROAD by Ruben Briseno Reveles |
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OWL
by John Grey The moon seems frozen in the winter sky. Starlight skates across its sheen. And brittle too. As if a break here on earth would crack its rock as well. An owl perched on a high oak branch is on the lookout for a tremble in the shadows, while its ears prod and poke in the grasses, the cavities, like an old man with a stick. A field mouse runs a gauntlet — the only path it knows. The raptor pounces. A squeal's back is broken before it has a chance to be a scream. Life is as good as it is pessimistic. It's as stiff as ice and yet bends to a hungry will. The hoots of the night are the chill's enticement. The hoots of the night are gratefully cruel. |
MOON THROUGH TREE by Ruben Briseno Reveles |
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QUARTZ RIDGE
by Karly Lake McCullough There is a secret place On the east face Touched by the dawn Looking out across the air Nothing there But one thousand feet down Shallow graves of fallen stones And the wind moans Follow me along Breath of clouds To call aloud Answering the owl's song Just feet to cross the distance Forget that insistence That you stay still Frost and sun kiss the stone One thousand feet from home The cliff edge is shaking It's a long fall And then that's all You never feel the breaking |
ANGEL NIGHT by Ruben Briseno Reveles |
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MIDAS
by Fabrice B. Poussin Midas, long before him, touched— under his hand all changed to gold; all was transformed to the highest, perhaps to satisfy and show what was sublime. The knife, every day, used for lunch and work, a glass and a cup, for the much enjoyed drinks; the spoon, and the fork that knew him so well, felt a heart and soul that made them precious gems. By the shed, the axe's handle still warm, all of his garden tools, many forever resting, to him a room, his sunroom, his museum, where so often he shelled the nuts harvested. His favorite chair now retired to the attic, silence prevails where the four wheels used to hum, prints in the muddy soil like a dinosaur's foot, still resounding with the care he took. Resting for just an instant, on the pillar of the barn he built, ready to exert his strength again on a world awaiting him, the atmosphere even retains the glorious shape of his life, with hand and foot, all of his humanly being. Wrinkle or sweet caress on the smooth surface of time, recalling his passage, it has changed to never return, to the form which it showed before, like Midas he came and left his mark, indeed he did. |
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