Is This Your Baby?

Brake lights on the red sports car flash on, off, on. 

It creeps slow enough to see, 

steers around, then is away.

Two small brown dogs 

are dancing on the blacktop.

A baby stands watching,

barefoot, by himself, and beaming at his friends.  Then he wobbles forward on unsteady legs. 

Without a thought, the stranger child is in my arms.

Furious and wild, I climb to the nearest house and find a man in the yard with his son. 

Is this your baby?

Eyes roll. Never seen it before. Probably belongs to them up the road. They're no good. 

I refuse to walk the gravel road, and instead struggle up through fields of tall summer grass that slices my legs and trips my feet, and gives me time to feel.  He's in just a diaper and a short stained t-shirt. I feel his frightened limbs cling, his round belly, his quick young heart. He rests his furrowed brow on my shoulder and whimpers "Ma."

I try to breathe calm into him. We'll find her. Don't worry. 

Far up the hill I can see the little house with the back door slid open. 

© Laura Seale, 2013

Woman Carrying a Baby
1804 print from Wikimedia Commons 

Distant Thunder

 It

                               comes

                   quietly at first

                barely sensed in the

               darkening ocean of sky,

                 a predator stalking its prey,

                      just audible distant rumbles of energy,   

       foreboding gray waves of sound, enter ears and
    roll over and through one’s wakened consciousness,

       agitated electrons’ full bass exploding in deep

              resonant voice of nature’s power and

                 presence, demanding recognition

                    that dominion beyond man

                             continues to

                                 rule

      © William Vollrath, 2013

Lightning over Las Cruces, New Mexico
USAF photo by Edward Aspera, Jr.
from Wikimedia Commons

Fish

A fish was swimming in a pond.

I saw it with my eyes.

I'd never seen a fish before

That wasn't with French fries.

© Joyce Broughton, 2013

Photo by Ewan Munro from London, UK
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I'm Too Young to Write a Poem

It would be offensive to write on singleness. 

I haven't learned to love the early quiet

in decades of mornings spent alone 

scrambling eggs and memorizing the

murmur of a waking apartment complex.

I can't write on the lifespan of a tragedy.

How an abandoned dream seeps into your

bones slowly like sun stroking furniture

into fade. How a death feels first like an

amputation. In time, an empty pocket.

I'm of an age where girls cry more at movies

than any true heartbreak & our parents 

are still middle aged & we've only known

two generations of family pets & boys

have been playmates longer than potentials.

I'm not even qualified to write on faith;

strong in the the theory of it, still stumbling

into practice. What do I know of dying

daily when I've just learned what death is? 

What have I sacrificed when I own nothing?

I'm too young to write a poem. 

         I'm still young enough to want to.

© Sarah Fletcher, 2013

"Getting Ready for the Movie"
Photo by Belinda Hankins Miller
from Wikimedia Images

A Hot August in the Sistine Chapel

Shoulder to sweaty shoulder they stand

Eyes focused upward, seeking the perfection painted there.

A naked Adam, perfect, muscular, and beautiful

Reclines on a cool, verdant slope

His left knee bent, supporting

A hand that reaches out

His finger gently touching that of the Creator

Unpainted, but implied, a spark leaps

Giving birth to the human soul.

Below, the sweltering crowd stares

Their gentle murmer growing in

A crescendo of wonder.

“Silencio. “ An Italian bass booms over the crowd

Too unruly for such a sacred place.

They quiet, wondering when they will be prodded back into the August heat

To make room for the next pilgrims.

They wait, struggling with this demand for reverence.

“Silencio.”  Again, the sinners are chastised.

They have failed to be worthy of such beauty.

© Carolyn Brumbaugh, 2013

 God Creates Adam, from Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Upon Seeing Trout in a Plate

We caught them,

                     all three,

victoriously,

with tight lines,

and flying water,

                and the stabbing,

dodging

end of a rod.

And they fought,

each for its life,

desperate in struggle,

with splashing glory,

and the pain of survival.

But now,

with their heads gone,

I wish we could do it again.

© Peter Hartwig, 2013

Lithograph by Edouard Pingret
Wikimedia Images, from the
Bibliotheque municipale de Toulouse

After Show Aches

The cold chokes my throat igniting immunity with energy warmer than an oven of convection.

Vibrations still rattle rocked ribs, repeating rhythms, pulsing through fingertips; I am alert with agreeable adrenaline observations.

Playing stuck songs backwards and forwards, mandala hemispheres chatter with excited interpretations.

Laying my head upon thumping shoulders I shimmy in chilly acceleration.

Driving back to padded cage with pulsing hips still crying out for ambulation,

I mentally marvel at composition that continues to expose a mass to an accumulation of acculturation.

Still skipping I step into a wet jungle heat, rinsing sweat and feeling the saturation

of sweet streaming rivulets; oxygenation creating the perfect negative ionic sedation.

Stretching, sleepy articulations crack, pop, and snapple, as muscles create compositions out of yogi positions;

releasing restricted tensions, limbs curve in evolutionary arches of emancipating elevation.

Excited for ethereal fantasies, equilibrium turns exhausted orientation into disorganization.

Restful slumber permits the reclamation of youthful rejuvenation,

as peaceful dreams dance wildly to harmonious beats of ecstatic revelation.

© Sarah Bordeau-Rigertink, 2013

Dancing Moghul women. From Auguste Racinet's Le Costume Historique, originally published in France between 1876 and 1888.
from Wikimedia Images; in the public domain