Forest

Frog Hollow (Excerpt)

By VICKIE DIESCHER

My dream last night was mostly of the woods above the creek

particularly the hemlock hill.

I was wandering in the crooked, charcoal trees, sun shining in patches through the limbs

rust colored fallen needles all about me on the rocky root-woven ground.

I was thinking of god, wondering where he was.

Winter Solstice

By KATHLEEN G. GRIMALDI

Dark green trees

etched sharply in silver light

cast their long shadows

across the glistening snow.

These strong silent presences

speak

as surely as

any ancient sage.

Pointing to the distant stars,

they still send their roots

under and down through the earth

for the nourishment that sustains them.

Their home is here.

At the darkest time of the year,

they speak of a light invisible,

of an energy so strong, so silent, so enduring.

Walking the Plank Road

By WILL CONWAY

Two wooden sentries spin in white and gray.

Bent trunks, shaped by sun, twist as if to pray.

They stand as one, as we, in love’s embrace.

Soft needles brush a fanned and leafy face.

Such truth, as bound trees share in sandy loam,

ignites a precious joy we’d call our own.

Their corkscrewed form winds leftward at the sky

in a way that lingers, and draws a sigh.

Iconic beacon flushing bird and breeze,

these steadfast lovers are something more than trees.

It’s we who spiral on earth’s vacant space

in earnest guise to make a nesting place.

Heaven would bind us with what is below

sparking passion’s coil with remembered glow.

This week’s Celebrations poets:

Will Conway is a Master Gardener who lives and writes in Mongaup Valley, NY. He writes a gardening column the first week of every month for The River Reporter.

Vickie Diescher enjoys a simple life in the Damascus, PA countryside, writing when the muse blesses her and laughing ceaselessly at life’s challenging moments.

Kathleen G. Grimaldi lives and writes in Lords Valley, PA. In summers, she divides her time between the mountains of Connecticut, where she grew up, and the mountains along the Delaware in Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in two anthologies and she has been a participating poet in the Robert Frost Festival of Poetry held annually at his farm in New Hampshire.