Lisa Kilhefner
Inspiration piece

Salmon
By Sharon A. Murphy
Response

Your colors startle me,

silver scales, copper ripples

in the water

Jumping higher into the waterfall,

glistening gills, variegated tails

thrashing in air.

Extinction into exaptation.

You’ve adapted to the very nature

of the current, to the habitat.

Eggs to fry to fingerling,

smolt to adult to spawner.

Beating all the odds

within and without, you find your mate

to spawn and die.

And the aquatic life cycle starts again.

You are King, Chinook, Coho, Silver, Chum,

Keta, Silverbrite and DogPink,

Humpback, Sockeye, Red, and Steelhead.

Fresh water, salt water, you return full circle.

Watching from the rocks, I don’t know how to swim.

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Brushed Blue
By Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration piece

Like a lint Roller the wind
Picks up leaves and earth and the tiny delicate last petals of summer
Rolling them into a painting of our lives at the moment
Temperatures rolling and waving from near freezing
Into the 60s late summer warmth and back
Down to the chill, the reminder
That we are in winter
And the dark comes very early
The time has changed
Our clothes have changed
And jacket blanketed we face the wind and prepare for
Cooler times and the dark
Which we would like to avoid.

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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.