Owl

creeped out

 

A Sighting
by Connie Wanek
The gray owl had seen us and had fled
but not far. We followed noiselessly,
driving him from pine to pine:
I will not let thee go except thou bless me.
He flew as though it gave him no pleasure,
forcing himself from the bough,
falling until his wings caught him:
they had to stroke hard, like heavy oars.
He must have just eaten
something that had, itself, just eaten.
Finally he crossed the swamp and vanished
as into a new day, hours before us,
and we stood near the chest-high reeds,
our feet sinking, and felt
we’d been dropped suddenly from midair
back into our lives.
 
“A Sighting” by Connie Wanek, from On Speaking Terms. Copyright © 2010 by Connie Wanek. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

when gentleness died…

illustrator: Katerina Babanofsky

 

The Year Gentleness Died 
by Michael Kiesow Moore

It was the year gentleness died.
Larry was first to go 
the sweet young man covered with purple lesions 
He was the sweetest. Men can be sweet, you know.
Then it was Keith’s turn. 
He was a rebel rouser, full of righteous anger.
 But at his core he was all gentleness.
 And it was a plague against the gentle.
And then Frederic went, 
dear lovely Frederic.
 His spirit was like a puppy’s
 bouncing and joyful, always joyful,
 and now gone. and if you never met Kerry—
I could do this all day, telling you 
all whom we lost the year gentleness died.
They went in the tens,  then the hundreds,
 we lost them by the thousands, 
then ten times that across all the lands. They kept falling, all the gentle ones.
 
“The Year Gentleness Died” by Michael Kiesow Moore from The Song Castle. Nodin Press © 2019.