August Poetry Postcard Fest: part 4 (Aug 10-12)

(Updated to include images)

August 10, 2008

This Place

The car chews highways into gravel
roads, hours vent through hot
exhaust. We park our ears
in the sudden silence. Water,
birds, breeze, sky--ripe
words ready for harvest. We shuck
city skin like corn husks,
our flesh pink as peaches.


August 11, 2008

On the trail, they push, pecking
order established, challenged,
reformed. They wrestle
for my attention, wriggle like puppies
when I praise their careful eye.
One spies a turtle sunning herself
at the water's edge, the other
counts each stripe in a hunk of rock,
repeating its scientific name.


August 12, 2008

We name it dead wood, deem
it worthless, shiftless, rootless,
but on the trail, it breathes
life into moss and mushrooms,
finds beauty, purpose in decay.
Each ring tells a story we lack
patience to decipher. Time
is not our enemy.