Sliced tomatoes in a blue bowl.
Mine to savor
on another not so distant day
the image I want brought back
as I head onto and in icy roads
and hard, unyielding ditches.

 

 

 

Story Links

It’s Gon’ a Snow

A Tango with Blacky

 

 

Thunder Arm at Diablo 2007

The sewing needle found in the salad
an unforgotten vinaigrette
the elderly woman not yet old
feeds the dog crackers
each one held high
the Chuckanut vista swayed
eagle height
the sleepy dust of girlhood
slid,
holding onto a truck’s frame
the upper Skagit Valley night etched
all a form of gray water
perhaps too murky to grow
summer squash,
cucumber vines
or steaming compost.

 

Blue

Great Blue’s squawk
jump starts
my soul’s dead battery.

Heron

I would look you in the eye
Great Blue
your stealth mine to copy
each step an enunciation.

 

 

 

 

Ben B:

A short-short story

 

 

 

HELIOS RISING

This Eastern morning easily looses the fog
She slips the halter from the horse,
and pats its haunch
As it emerges from the corral:
Palomino canter and quick step dust.

Its hoof prints fading bronze
The snort a hiccouph
And a shrug
Of its shaggy shoulders,
The blonde now unburdened
The milky mane streams
Into cool lustered freedom.

 

 

GRANITE STONE

Shoes scuffed with apple orchard duff
Their leather licked dry
St. Paul , Ferndale or Seattle
Marble columns or barn boards:
The street or road conduits
Again and yet again
Into alleys bricked,
The bus boarded,
Its driver barking a goodbye,
I step from the last riser
And find you waiting,
The hillside there just beyond,
That gray stone,
A dried apple core,
That name, always that name.