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.

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.