Page 12 - Contrast1979v22n2

Quiet

At dawn ice-rock rails
clutch wooden struts
jaded with seasonal change
they shoot over concrete gravel-dirt
through creaking clawing trees
Solitude lurks
where rails curve vanish
blowing back its wind
numbing lips and nose

Elise Shurie Ripping silence in hour-seconds
clashing churning streaming steel
blends and burns in frosted tracks
whistling a smile here
and there at the bend
leaving brisk embers dancing midair
to drop between calm jaws

Karl Bugenhagen

A shack stands ,
with boards
attacked by every fresh wind
that runs off the waving salt water.

Brothers gather
and repalce some rotting boards
transforming
the deadwood shack
into a sunlit,
woven green-branch home.

Laughter dances them out
to women
rich in touch-love.
The sunshine
follows them
into the church
and onward.

The shack boards
teeter;
while salt-rusted nails
ready to abandon
gray planks.

And the branches, now brown
and brittle
break,
and blow away.

10 Sabrina Raccuglia