Poetry Niche Anticipation by Steve Griffin
The vivid hues of flowers are muted by the dust. The radiant green of leaves now dully turned to rust. The nightly coquetries of dews, Prove but a faithless lover’s ruse. The empurpled glory of jacaranda bloom, lie in dusty heaps beneath a gardener’s broom. The barbed-wire whine of the cicadas, disturb the heated air. Pelican bereft, the listless lake, looks skyward with a vacant stare. The hills adorned in somber gowns, Gaze down with pensive eyes. Furrowed fields lie fallow like dusty, open thighs, beneath the knife-blue, sterile, unresponsive skies. All await with bated breath the groom with all his train, his attendant, cloudy lords and life producing rain.
Autumn Years by Gabrielle Blair
These last forty years you and I’ve been together. Spring has past, Summer’s gone, now Autumn weather. Note wrinkles, furrows, graying hair grown thin, Paunches, spare tires, flabby thighs, drooping skin. Our voices familiar, thoughts left trailing … Forgetting a name - call something a “thing.” Small kindnesses shown reveal that we care, Hurt feelings let go, still moments we share. Things left unsaid, sometimes deeds misconstrued; Sadness dispersed with a joke understood. Winter’s approaching, be mindful of cold! Keep home fires burning, as all must grow old. Smiling and laughing, we cling to the fun. For light-hearted joy’s kept loves web re-spun.
Latin Dancers by John Sacelli
Latin Dancers dance as ever the men erect and proud the ladies carried by the tempo of marimba, conga, castanet. Yet the rhythm of the dance has slowed at first almost imperceptibly and then more definite until the figures of the dancers seem more distant, moving less like men and women, than dolls, puppets, marionettes. They are retreating, falling into memory
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El Ojo del Lago / June 2022
moving off into the darkness of old ideas, ideals and dreams. The motion of the dance remains yet flickers like the passion of the past.
Love Is Love by Michael Warren
A poet wrote that love is gold while others say it’s blind but all I know is what I hold when you, my love, are kind. Though words are whirling in my mind words can be bought and sold and gold’s a metal that was mined and made in bricks, so hard and cold – no, love is love, my love, as we grow old, then when you’re sitting by the fire where dying embers of desire flicker like stories often told, I’ll come and find you, touch your hand
Morning Meditation by Bill Frayer
Sliding silently into the murky pond my wooden paddle breaks the glass pushing ripples, gurgling softly, surging the kayak towards the cabin on the point nestled among the pointed firs emerging from the morning mist. Past a lonely, weathered dock waiting patiently on crooked greasy green slime-covered legs, shadows of fish, lurking furtively as the far-away loon hoots, as a hazy sun peeks with anticipation over the blackened hulk of the mountain. I feel my stomach growl. Smells like fresh cut grass as I push through the lily pads. I’m startled as a great heron descends gliding to his perch on a half-submerged dried needleless spruce sapling to resume his silent, wary vigil. My reel whirs, worm and bobber plop near a lone turtle sitting silently on an algae-coated rock. A dragonfly alights on the end of my pole joining our community of morning lake life we share at this moment. I think of the fish slithering beneath our loud silence.
