Icy Stigmatization
Contributed by Mary Wessling
Reflections of the past lay deep beneath the sparkling snow.
Frozen layers of timid ice remain hesitantly locked, hiding what few may know.
As the Spring melts away the frosted facade, fronted by the mysteriously murky waters,
The truth floods through and enlightenment lights aglow.
The ice turns to flowing water, reflecting a beautiful cloudless sky, freed from the secrets kept below.
Surrounding life flourishes and feeds from the excited flow.
That is, until disaster reaps the acceptance sowed.
Parasitic burning sweeps across the life that once fed from the waters that helped it grow.
Trees reduce to stumps, leaving harrowing smoke and fiery residue residing on the water's shore.
The secrets freed from the ice now returns to hide once more.
Snow layers itself upon the mysteriously murky waters, putting out the fires of the forest floor.
Stigma only stumps the growth of those you care for.
About Time
Contributed by Frank Loosli
It’s about time…It’s about time…It’s about time
About the loves we’ve found, and the loves we’ve lost
It’s about loving again, no matter the cost
It’s about time we found ourselves here
It’s about time we shook the fear
It’s about now, it’s about then, It’s about time
It’s about dreams, about schemes, about the roads we took
It’s about pleasure, it’s about pain
It’s about sunshine, it’s about rain
That falls on every heart
It’s about music, it’s about art
It’s about dreams that took us both in
About fears that took us out again
It’s about looking at the road we’re on
Where we’ve been, and the road ahead
Making the choices to sing our songs
All about dreams that never come true,
All about dreams that sometimes do
It’s about passions that become our friends
When true friends all but disappear
Real life situations, everyone’s fantasies
It’s about love, it’s about hate,
It’s about choices, it’s about fate
It’s about who we are and the people we’ve been
It’s about strangers, it’s about friends
It’s about me, it’s about you
Laughing in the sunshine, crying in the rain
A little bit crazy, a little bit sane
Life and all its stories
It’s about you, It’s about me
It’s about time, don’t you think?
Moonstruck
Contributed by Wendy Brooker
Fifty years ago
July was on a sticky downhill slide
in the humidity of a Midwest night
I lay on a cotton sheet
laid across the living room floor
along with the Sunday Funnies
My parents and sisters and I
glued to the tube
together in time
held hands with all mankind it seemed
held our breath and leapt
as a man stepped
onto the moon
in monochrome momentousness
the painstakingly planned footprint
on the fine powdered lunar surface
also etched now into our amazed imaginations
The moon whispered to me later
through my open window
partly shadowed
waxing crescent
It pulled at the tides of my brain and pubescent body
beginning to explode with possibilities
wondering
What else now might we do
What else now might I do
if I dared
Dogs of Summer
Contributed by Nan Potts
Melted dogs
in sweltering clogs,
yearn to breath
from heated slogs,
up and down
through blistering bogs,
and mountains
high above the fogs,
where they rest
and remove their togs,
freedom earned
get a soak and snogs,
socks then donned
to trek on at jogs,
query when
they will cease these flogs,
and end this
romp with Summer grogs.
Outhouse Memories
Contributed by Darroll Hargraves
There are memories of long ago,
Memories of when I had to go.
Memories of the house behind the house.
Because I had to go.
Rain or shine, no matter what
When nature calls you have to squat.
For those who never had to trot out into the cold
Give thanks to the God above for the privileged life
that you have lived.
Yes, there is much you have missed
if you have not had the little house
behind the house when you had to go.
