Leaves carry gold tones only the rocks hear whispers slip into silence by Jackie Richmond
"Calaveras Jumping Frogs"
By Michael Sweeney
on it goes
even today
green flights of fancy
testosterone madness
at the Calaveras Fairgrounds
and no, not among the frogs
owners
sweat and fret
yell and scream
their KentuckyDerby
and perhaps their very worth!
defined
by these leaps
of faith
prods, tickles
sweet nothings
til finally
gravity is beaten
the beast lifts off
soaring high
hope rising with every inch
up, up, and away!
damn you Mathilda!
have you no shame?
haven't I been good to you?
don't I read Mark's books
out loud
each and very night?
and for what?
you stopped short again
Kramer would be proud
but I
sink towards the bottom
God, it must be close!
'cause talking to my frog
is not a good sign
Black Dog By Monika Rose The black dog arrives three times in succession: I. I hurtle down the highway Then he noses into my car and disappears after a thud The bruised car grazes by the roadside still ticking and steaming while highway asphalt shimmers II. Next time weeks later he lopes up our dirt road gives a backward glance, tongue lolling red his legs a machine He clearly vanishes after Headlight beam and eye shine Expose him as shadow III. Take this holy water, my friend insists It will protect you from the black dog Her hand shakes with the weight And passes over a plastic Wishbone bottle with a Jesus cut-out pasted to the label IV. I sprinkle her scented water over thresholds lines of entry and all windows doors and openings, save some But the dog comes for my friend’s son and too late I wonder about shelf life, code dates for holy water, and if it is still good The Ranch Legend by Muriel Zeller Even the oak tree is a ghost in this legend. It canopies a ghost pony and a ghost girl. She leans back against the tree trunk, harvests the land with her eyes, holds leather reins in her hand like a ghost would, lightly. Saddle leather creaks a haunting as the pony shifts, half dozing. Spirits rise out of cracked hills, Sierra Nevada foothills rippling with summer, cow paths written in the dirt. Under a hot blue sky, she is a shadow within the shadow of limbs, untouchable. A body a hand would pass through. By Kathie Isaac-Luke In late July, I leaned Camouflage
on the porch rail watching the last
of the morning fog evaporate,
when a half-grown deer came down
from the hills, daydreaming.
Preoccupied, he noticed me too late.
No thicket for him to duck into,
no tall trees to block his silhouette,
his crop of young mossy antlers.
Against the fawn-colored grass
scorched low, he stopped
and stoodshadow still.
If I closed my eyes, I wondered,
would I become invisible too?
Something passed between us,
then after that long silence
he melted into animation,
turned his head toward one
side of the path, then the other,
and resumed his stroll down
to the creek already reduced to a trickle.