Text Box: THE BEAVERS Unsuspecting he mounted the severed willow that sprawled across the water. I crouched behind a cedar. Knowing no better solution I triggered a clean shot. Death so sudden I wondered if his spirit worked on unknowing. Some choices are not easy. That’s why this evening after, I leave my borrowed rifle and return where these trees have gathered on the slow strides of their years to sip from a circle of dusk. The widowed beaver with a flat slap of her tail shatters the surface of my small lake, warns of an enemy lurking near. No ears but mine to hear. No eyes but mine to watch her swim upstream into the woods from which they’d emerged weeks ago. I float my offering of limp regret on the fragmented waves and watch the broken mirror heal itself.

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Motto: Writers Helping Writers

Rome Area Writers

“Poetry”

By David Hightower
Text Box: THE ANGEL I first saw her on a summer day as I wandered the flea market. She perched modestly among grinning gargoyles. The Asian man wearing a crushed hat and smoking a cigarette waved me over. “ Fifty dollar,” he said, “ very old.” ” I have gambling problem.” He pulled a book from his back pocket, its pages filled with printed numbers as proof of his weakness. “ Must sell cheap!” he laughed, “ Very old!” I looked at the crude figure streaked with rust stains to imitate age, made of concrete poured into a metal mold and dried in a day. The man smiled as if to let me in on the joke and dropped the price to twenty dollars. I lugged the angel I had had no intention of buying the quarter mile to my car, wondering all the while where I could put her. She found her place beside my pond sheltered by the twisted branches of an old man pine. For two years she has gazed into the mirror of the sky blessing all life indiscriminately, frogs, snakes, fish and birds, and the swimmer who always pauses to admire the angel he didn’t want, inconspicuous and comforting from her shrine of weeds and wild flowers Text Box: Made in the Shade Chimpanzees lounge beneath the trees, idly ignoring the shadowy forms that haunt the full length windows and the antic arms pointing from another dimension. A lazy silence drifts beneath the heavy net tied to the four corners of heaven. No cries of alarm, predators are locked down a hundred feet away. No excited chatter, no screams of play, no new smells, invade their thoroughly explored world. Languidly they scratch, pick, chew; they’ve got it made in the shade in the Chattanooga Zoo. Vines are securely attached, never rot; molded trees and rocks are concrete hard, never roll away or crack. Bananas don’t grow up high; they drop at their feet from a generous sky. They don’t compete for mates; their mates are carefully chosen and delivered. If they become ill, they are healed, or gently tranquilized into oblivion. Yet in a secluded corner a pair of eyes, almost human, Hides a spark of patient anger, searches for a chink in the shield that protects him from all danger. With a slender stick he taps Out a monotonous mantra… Escape, escape, escape. Text Box: HAWK Perched on a telephone line the feathered king surveys his kingdom. Invitations, regrets, congratulations, busy syllables tumble through the grasp of his claws. Everyday gossip, frantic reminders, happy birthdays, angry words, it’s all the same to him. The hunter’s wings unfold as businesses spit out urgent messages and lovers whisper their private words. His shadow scythes across the meadow; animals dodge and shriek. He glides a current of silence back to the taut humming of his throne. A voice dangles limp from his talons; the conversation goes on.