Untitled
By Jenny Forrester
Inspiration piece

My three chickens fed in the alley, and I watched over them, my triangle-shaped knitting bag with the handy wrist loop dangling. I worked on many pairs of socks for His size thirteen feet in that alley watching over chickens. When he left, he left all those socks. Huge socks, tiny stitches. A pair of arm warmers for his long, long arms. He left me to deal with the years of us, taking nothing, telling me not to take it personally that he wanted to start over with all the things, and saying sorry he couldn’t help more. He said, “I’m sorry it’s not better.”

I was sorry, too.

I walked today in the quiet cold. It snowed inches and inches today. Horse, my car, had never been covered in so much snow. She’s snug under the weight of it, waiting for the plow to come. A freight train covered in snow idled by the snowy creek and I knew my solitude in a way that I’ve always wanted to know it, but didn’t have the courage to step into.

Sometimes, we’re thrown out into the cold. Sometimes, we land in the soft bank of it and sometimes, it’s just cold.

The creek was breathtaking, and a man in a blue coat was fishing, huddled into it the way you have to. The cottonwoods were dry and tangled and the sky was pale and winter. The wetland stream above the earthen, flood control dam, slate gray and turning to slush. A pair of ducks flew by and a murder of crows flew high in the gray chill.

Everyone on the walk said hello – the thin running man in stripes, perfect posture, the man on the bike, layered, the woman with her red coat smiling, too, together in our shared desire for this kind of solitude.

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Lené Gary, Route 2
Response

For the Love of Trees
By Marla Deschenes
Inspiration piece

My mind cannot comprehend how so many people deny the earth its power

Thinking that we creatures of water and bone

Hold more importance than these silent trees

Who humble me in my nightly walks

With their majestic presence.

Looking up through those wooden arms stretched to spindly fingertips

Until my head can go no farther back

A seemingly endless climb straight to the sky

Surrounded by the embrace of winter’s still leafless branches.

I step over the broken glass

The candy wrappers and the bottle caps

To touch the roughened skin of the being

Who has stood in this spot for the ages

Watching endless streams of children

Cross the fields and playground

To the school building nestled safely

Amongst the tallest oaks and pines.

I send my thanks to you, my beloved trees

With your roots that hold the earth in place

That endless holding down the of the dirt

That we will once again become.

We will meet again in another realm

The thankless removed from the love of the equation

Where we will speak the language of the grass

And the dust that was once my bones

Will cradle your roots

Grasping strong with my hands that no longer exist

No more water and bone

But reverence for your patience

And for the air you sought to purify even for my last lingering breath.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.