earthstrings

in a string

of starry lapis blue,

god

is the dappled dzi bead

earth-toned and warm

~Earth: Our Common Ground (2017)

the fingers

of a blind harper

touching

the earthstrings at dawn . . .

a wood thrush answers

~The Right Touch of Sun: 

TSA Members' Anthology 2017

But Now We Are Many

fire

on the mountain

fire in the mind

ashes ashes

we all fall down

The Smokies: ridge beyond ridge of ancient mountains, wrapped in a soft blue haze of rain and the moist outbreath of trees. The highest peaks are temperate rain forest, mossy and dripping. But now the picture changes . . . because the climate changes. Hot smoke replaces the gentle mist as fire consumes the forest, tinder-dry after months of heat and drought. Crown fires leap from treetop to treetop. High winds drive a firestorm through Gatlinburg, trapping people in their homes where they burn to death. Several days have passed and children are still missing. The Appalachian Trail smolders.

smoke

from distant wildfires

fills my lungs . . .

I dream of the blue planet,

one seed sprouting in ash

Pollen grains tell stories.  Drifting like gold dust on a cold wind, grass pollen sifts into lakes, to be buried in mud for 20,000 years. Grass pollen tells of an Ice-Age Europe covered with open steppes where forests should have grown—the climate favored trees, not grasses. But layers of ash tell stories, too—the story of fires that burned the forests, fires set by Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who transformed their world long before the first factory smokestacks began to spew their plumes of ash and deadly gases.

sparks

from a stone-age campfire

scorch the map

crumpled in my hand

a dusty oak leaf

~KYSO Flash 7, Spring 2017.  Finalist in ‘One Life, One Earth’ Contest.

On the Cusp of Winter

An unfamiliar car crunches slowly up my quarter-mile gravel driveway. I hope it’s not the Jehovah’s Witnesses again. An elderly lady climbs out of the driver’s seat. I  don’t want to intrude, she says, but I was born in this house, in 1938.  I just lost my husband, and I had a yen to see my homeplace again.  Her eyes swim with tears. She points to the well-house. I remember my Daddy climbing down into that well, she says. My, it was a long way down!

water

rising from a deep place  . . .

the last petals

of the autumn-blooming cherry

drift earthward

~Skylark 4:1, summer 2016

autumn light

not knowing

where I am

in a golden wood

I follow the leaf-light

that glimmers within me

~redlights 13:1, Jan. 2017

the wings

of a dragonfly

clear

as autumn light

the shortness of days

~Spent Blossoms: TSA Members'Anthology 2015

winnowed

to the last leaf

a woman

and a willow oak

wrapped in a blue silk sky

~cattails April 2017